Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and

EdData II

Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and the Middle East (DEP/AME)

Research on Reading in Morocco: Analysis of the National Education Curriculum and Textbooks (Component 1)

Final Report

EdData II Technical and Managerial Assistance, Task Number 15 Contract Number AID-EHC-E-00-04-00004 Task Number AID-OAA-BC-11-00001 March 5, 2015

This report was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by RTI International and Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane.

Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and the Middle East (DEP/AME)

Research on Reading in Morocco: Analysis of the National Education Curriculum and Textbooks (Component 1)

Final Report Prepared for

Christine Capacci-Carneal, Senior Education Advisor, Middle East Bureau Mitch Kirby, Senior Education Advisor, Asia Bureau Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative Data for Education Programming/Asia and Middle East USAID / Washington 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20523 Prepared by

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EdData II Task Order 15 (DEP/AME)

Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page i

Table of Contents

Page

List of Figures..................................................................................................................... iii

List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... iii

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... v

Preface ........................................................................................................................... vi

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Importance of early reading .................................................................................... 2

1.3 Importance of the textbook ..................................................................................... 3

1.4 The stages of reading development ......................................................................... 4

2. About this Study .............................................................................................................. 7

2.1 Objectives of the analyses ...................................................................................... 7

2.2 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 9

2.3 Study tools ........................................................................................................... 10

3. Curriculum Analysis ..................................................................................................... 10

3.1 The White Book (2002) ........................................................................................ 10

3.2 Pedagogical Guide (2009) .................................................................................... 16

3.3 Analysis of the national textbook specifications (2002) ........................................ 22

Student textbook ............................................................................................... 22

Characteristics of the teacher’s guide ................................................................ 30

3.4 Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 31

4. Textbook Analysis ......................................................................................................... 32

4.1 Phonemic awareness ............................................................................................ 32

4.2 Alphabetic principle ............................................................................................. 32

Teaching the Arabic alphabet in the first grade ................................................. 32

4.3 Vocabulary development ...................................................................................... 38

Concrete vs. abstract words............................................................................... 38

Word frequency ................................................................................................ 41

4.4 Fluency ............................................................................................................... 44


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page ii

Sentence length................................................................................................. 44

Simple and complex phrases ............................................................................. 46

Declarative and expressive sentences ................................................................ 49

Use of punctuation ............................................................................................ 51

4.5 Reading comprehension ....................................................................................... 51

Strategies and objectives ................................................................................... 51

Monitoring comprehension ............................................................................... 53

4.6 Teaching methods ................................................................................................ 56

4.7 Values, issues and scientific vocabulary in the textbook ....................................... 58

Grade 1 .................................................................................................. 58

Grade 2 .................................................................................................. 58

Grade 3 .................................................................................................. 59

4.8 Analysis of gender in the textbooks ...................................................................... 60

4.9 Artistic aspects of the textbook ............................................................................. 61

4.10 Other issues ........................................................................................................ 62

Vowelization .................................................................................................. 62

Punctuation .................................................................................................. 62

Prior Knowledge ............................................................................................... 63

5. Conclusions and recommendations .............................................................................. 66

5.1 General conclusions ............................................................................................. 66

5.2 Observations concerning the improvement of the textbooks ................................. 67

Textbooks are not developed in a manner consistent with the latest

evidence in early grade reading methods .................................................... 67

There are not clearly articulated learning outcomes specified in the

curriculum or textbooks ............................................................................. 70

5.3 Summary of recommendations ............................................................................. 71

Short term recommendations ............................................................................ 71

Long-term Recommendations ........................................................................... 72

Annex 1: Textbook names and references ........................................................................ 73

Annex 2: Frequency analysis of Arabic language ............................................................ 75


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page iii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Relationship between illustrations and text ................................................................. 30

Figure 2. Example from the first lesson of Al Mufiid: .............................................................. 35

Figure 3. Extract from the first lesson of Kitaabii: ..................................................................... 36

Figure 4. Continuation of the first lesson of Kitaabii: ................................................................ 37

Figure 5. Continuation of the lesson for letter “s” in Kitaabii .................................................... 37

Figure 6. Proportion of abstract (abstrait) vs. concrete (concret) words in Grades 1 and 2 ......... 39

Figure 7. Proportion concrete and abstract words in Grade 3 textbooks ..................................... 40

Figure 8. Frequency of word repetition in Grade 2 .................................................................... 42

Figure 9. Frequency of word repetition in Grade 3 .................................................................... 42

Figure 10. Example specifications from Egyptian textbooks ...................................................... 43

Figure 11. Number of words per sentence, Grade 1 ................................................................... 44

Figure 12. Number of words per sentence in Grade 2 textbooks ................................................ 46

Figure 13. Number of words per sentence in Grade 3 textbooks ................................................ 46

Figure 14. Number of noun and verb phrases ............................................................................ 47

Figure 15. Percentage of simple and complex sentences ............................................................ 48

Figure 16. Breakdown by expressive phrase type in Grade 1 textbooks ..................................... 49

Figure 17. Breakdown by expressive phrase type in Grade 2 textbooks ..................................... 50

Figure 18. Levels of comprehension, Grade 1 ............................................................................ 53

Figure 19. Types of comprehension questions, Grade 2 ............................................................. 54

Figure 20. Types of comprehension questions, Grade 3 ............................................................. 55

Figure 21. Skills covered by the books ...................................................................................... 56

List of Tables

Table 1. CNEE Reading Assessment Rate of Correct Answers ................................................ viii

Table 2. Availability of textbooks ............................................................................................. xi

Table 3. Availability of textbooks (repeat of Table 2) ..................................................................9

Table 4. Curricular hours per week for Arabic language subject areas ....................................... 11

Table 5. Grade 1 curricular topics and introduction of letters ..................................................... 12

Table 6. Grade 2 curricular subject and introduction of letters ................................................... 13

Table 7. Weekly lessons by textbook ......................................................................................... 16

Table 8. Themes by week .......................................................................................................... 17

Table 9. General curricular competencies adopted by the Pedagogical Guide ............................ 18

Table 10. Reading types targeted by unit ................................................................................... 21

Table 11. Conformity of books to textbook specifications (content-related aspects) ................... 25

Table 12. Themes by week ........................................................................................................ 29

Table 13. Order of introduction of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, by Moroccan textbook ..... 33

Table 14. Order of introduction of the letters of the alphabet, foreign textbooks ........................ 33


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page iv

Table 15. Examples of concrete and abstract words ................................................................... 40

Table 16. Comparison of sentence length norms by grade ......................................................... 45

Table 17. Example sentence types from the books ..................................................................... 47

Table 18. Example sentence types from the books ..................................................................... 48

Table 19. Question types by textbook, Grade 3 .......................................................................... 54

Table 20. Teaching style in the reading classroom ..................................................................... 57

Table 21. Actions of the pupils .................................................................................................. 57

Table 22. Subjects of the Grade 1 textbooks .............................................................................. 58



Table 25. Gender analysis ......................................................................................................... 60

Table 26. Esthetic aspects of two textbooks ............................................................................... 62


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page v

Acknowledgments

This report was written by Abdellah Chekayri, Université Al Akhawayn in Ifrane, Samir Habib

and Sarah Pouezevera (RTI International).

The translation from Arabic to English was done by Badr Laadam and his team, with support

from Varlyproject for translation of graphics and editing by RTI International.

First of all, we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Fouad Chafiqui, Director of Curriculum at the

Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MENFP), for his guidance, advice and

assistance, and to the members of the steering and monitoring committees of the study.

We are also grateful to the sponsors of this study, United States Agency for International

Development (USAID) Morocco, and particularly Grace Lang and Mariam Britel- Swift, for

their valuable support, which was essential to the smooth progress of the study.

It goes without saying that every person who contributed to this work deserves our thanks.

Indeed, we’re indebted to the individuals who participated in the textbook analysis workshop

who contributed to the compilation and analysis of data. These individuals include, from Al

Akhawayne University: Brahim Boussouab, Samir Jaafar, Lahcen Ghechi, Moncef Lahlou, Hind

Saddiki et Youssef Ismaili; from Al Akhawayn University school, Loubna Agoudir, Mariam

Dahbi, Atika ElHadri, Abdelghani Kharroufi, et Shannon Combs; inspecteurs and teachers from

the province of Ifraine and El Hajeb, namely: Hassane Foudil, Abdellah Elouisi, Mohamed Dribi

Alaoui, Hourya Ben Chad, Khadija Hadre, Abdelkrim Bouroumia and Aicha Samih.

We thank the directors of the national education delegation in Ifrane—Ahmed Mrini and El

Hajeb, Mme Benabbou Soumaya—for their support.

Finally, we extend particular thanks Dr. Driss Ouaouicha, President of the University Al

Akhawayn; Dr. Mohammed Dahbi, Vice President of Academic Affairs; and Dr. Nizar Messari,

Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for their support before and during this

study as well as Jamila El Kilani and Lucie Kemystetter who helped edit the French translation

of the report.


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page vi

Preface

Morocco is a country with unique cultural and linguistic assets thanks to its historical influences

and to its geographical position at the crossroads of sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and

Europe and its proximity to the Middle East. The official language of the country is Arabic

(known as “classical Arabic” or “modern standard Arabic” [MSA]) while native and community

languages used by most children are either a Moroccan version of colloquial Arabic (Darija) or

one of the Amazigh languages and its regional variations, such as Tamazight, which is spoken in

central Morocco (the Middle Atlas, large parts of the High Atlas, and the south east of Morocco),

Tarifiyt in the North, and Tashelhiyt in the northern slopes of the High-Atlas, south of the Anti-

Atlas, and in the Sous area bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Wherever it is spoken, Arabic is

characterized by “diglossia,” that is to say, the co-presence of two language variations, one that

is used in formal education and is codified, and another that is used in regular exchanges in

everyday life. In Morocco, MSA is used in the school and governmental offices, while Darija is

the local variation, largely limited to oral expression with no written codification.1 Darija is

constantly evolving under the influence of borrowings from Amazigh, French, Spanish, etc. Even

within Morocco, Darija can vary from one region to another. As many words of Darija are

identical to MSA, it is not considered a separate language, but this does not mean that the two

languages are mutually intelligible. An individual who has never been to school and only speaks

Darija at home will hardly understand MSA.2 However, for an educated person, the two

varieties, colloquial and MSA, are nor seen as two separate languages; Arabic dialects and MSA

interact with each other and are complementary to the extent that they build a multifunctional

linguistic continuum.3

Amazigh, on the other hand, has become a codified written language since 2003 and uses

Tifinagh as its own alphabet. In 2011 Amazigh was recognized by the Constitution as an official

language of Morocco in addition to Arabic, and the methods of its integration in government

offices and society are still being negotiated.

The National Charter for Education and Training (CNEF), introduced in 2000, aims to achieve

three objectives:

Primary education for all and improved education in quality and performance

Reformed educational system

Modernized educational system

1 On the other hand, more recently the use of new technologies—especially SMS and online discussion forums or

social networks—has spurred the codification of Darija phonetically, using the Latin alphabet, with the use of

numbers for phonemes that don’t exist in in that alphabet; for example: “fus7a”, where the number 7 represents a

version of the phoneme /h/[ح].

2 FHI360 (2013). Mapping for reading best practices: Moroccan organizations improving reading skills in and out of

school. Draft Report. Report prepared for USAID/Morocco.

3 Chekayri, 2013: 151


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page vii

However, as the end of the decade approached, in 2009, the Government of Morocco was forced

to put in place a national emergency program to attain the above objectives. This program

extended the deadline for achievement of the objectives to 2015 and added one more objective:

The eradication of illiteracy. Moroccan children start primary education at the age of 6 years old.

Primary school runs for six years, followed by three years of secondary education until the age of

15. The standard Arabic (MSA4) is the official teaching language starting from the first grade. In

Morocco, French is still used in public life, and is considered the mother tongue of some

Moroccans. It is introduced from an early age as a teaching language in some preschools. The

CNEF recommended access to education for all school-age children and delivery of quality

educational services. The Charter granted fundamental importance to learning reading skills in

preschool:

... activities to get started on learning reading and writing skills in Arabic,

particularly through having good command of spoken Arabic, and relying on

mother tongues. (Article 63, p 33)

If the drop-out rate at the primary level is still estimated at 38 percent,5 this is partly due to

difficulties caused by languages of instruction, low initial teacher training, and high rates of

teacher absenteeism.6 According to the data obtained from the evaluation of the Emergency

Education Program, lack of schooling is mainly due to cost, accessibility, and family problems;

however, the implementation of a student monitoring system was successful in reducing

repetition rates.7 The quality of education is also an important factor in whether a child stays in

school.

Learning to read is the key to academic success. Reading, writing, and arithmetic skills constitute

the basis of all future student achievement. Academic success is furthermore associated with

other economic advantages that will benefit the individual and the country. However, Morocco is

losing this advantage because of the lack of quality learning for all children in the first school

years. In 2007, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) report ranked

Morocco in second-to-last place among the participating countries, with a score of 323 compared

to an average of 500 in other countries. The same report showed that 74 percent of students do

not reach the minimum threshold required to develop their reading skills. The 2011 report shows

4 Throughout this report, the term “Arabic” may be understood to refer to MSA, whereas “Darija” is used when

referring specifically to the variation spoken in Morocco.

5 UNICEF, At a glance: Morocco. Retrieved August 8, 2014, from

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/morocco_2238.html

6 FHI360. (2013).

7 SOFRECO (2013). Evaluation de mesures et de stratégies mises en œuvre dans le cadre du programme d’urgence

pour l’éducation au Maroc [Evaluation of strategic measures put in under the Emergency Education Program of

Morocco]. Rapport Final [Final Report]


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page viii

an even lower result, with Morocco having dropped to 310 in the field of reading. 8 This

downward trend in the level of reading of Moroccan students was observed between 2003 and

2011 for secondary education as well.

Similarly, the 2008 reading assessments, done by the National Center for Evaluation and Testing

(CNEE) (now the National Center for Evaluation, Testing, and Guidance [CNEEO] after

inclusion of guidance [the National Program for Educational Achievement Testing (PNEA)

program]) in collaboration with the Higher Council on Teaching (CSE), produced the following

results, in rate of correct answers, and further validated the conclusion that reading skills are low

in Morocco in the early years. Table 1 provides the results

Table 1. CNEE Reading Assessment Rate of Correct Answers

Language Primary Grade 2 Primary Grade 3

Arabic 32% 43%

French 31% 33%

Source: CSE, 2008

Finally, in 2011, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded an

evaluation conducted by RTI,9 an early grade reading assessment (EGRA), in the region of

Doukkala Abda, using an oral methodology that gives accurate and reliable results. The EGRA10

showed that only 34 percent of students in the second and third years of primary school could

read well a text adapted to their level in Arabic and fully understand its meaning. A large share

of boys as well as girls could not give the names of the letters of the alphabet or read simple

words; 33 percent of second grade students and 17 percent of third grade students could not read

a single word of the text (these students are called “non- readers”). Only 2.5 percent of the

surveyed students correctly answered 5 out of 6 questions on comprehension. The assessment

showed that the factors that affect students’ performance are multiple and complex:

Lack of teacher training: Studies have shown that Moroccan teachers receive little or no

specialized training in reading instruction and the assessment of students’ reading skills,

leaving them ill equipped to enable students to succeed in the first years of primary

school.

Lack of supplementary reading materials: Without these materials for all students and the

school, the global learning environment is greatly limited.

8 PIRLS (2011) Reading Achievement. http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/data-release-2011/pdf/Overview-TIMSS-

and-PIRLS-2011-Achievement.pdf

9 See www.eddataglobal.org

10 RTI International (2011). Student performance in reading and mathematics, pedagogic practice, and

school management in Doukkala Abda, Morocco. Report prepared for USAID under EdDataII.

http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/data-release-2011/pdf/Overview-TIMSS-and-PIRLS-2011-Achievement.pdf

http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/data-release-2011/pdf/Overview-TIMSS-and-PIRLS-2011-Achievement.pdf

http://www.eddataglobal.org/


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page ix

Lack of reading materials at home: Few children have the chance to read outside the

school. Only 9.5 percent of students answered that they do use their textbooks at home or

read every day at home. Over 52 percent of students reported that they never read aloud

at home, and only 32 percent do so “sometimes.”

Lack of parental involvement in student and school achievements: Parents meet with

teachers at least once a year, but the majority of teachers believe parental involvement is

insufficient.

Diversity of languages: The linguistic context of Morocco further complicates the

learning environment.

Within this framework, USAID and the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training

(MENFP) decided in early 2013 to scrutinize some of the factors that promote or hinder the

acquisition of reading in Arabic in the early years, through three components of a broad study,

namely:

A review of curriculum and learning materials (textbooks, teachers’ guidebook, etc.)

An analysis of initial teacher training and reading instruction

An analysis of the perceptions and attitudes of teachers and how they influence practice

The question of reading improvement has not always been overlooked, but deserves to be

discussed more deeply. Here are some direct and indirect examples of previous activities:

The promotion of reading in primary schools in rural areas under the BAJ (Barnamaj

alaoulaouiat alijtimaia) or Social Priorities Program. Several buses were purchased and

equipped as libraries, with books, comics, textbooks, dictionaries, etc. These bus libraries

were supplied in the 14 provinces covered by BAJ. The main objective was to bring the

information center to students and enable them to access various sources of reading.

A pilot project launched in five provinces, consisting of a project on workshops for

reading. The pilot aimed to make reading material available to students and to teach them

to read in conditions different from those in the classroom.

School theater activities, organized in all schools, allowing students to play and learn

from texts. Students were motivated to represent their schools at provincial, regional, and

national level events (Directorate of Technical Education and School Life [DETVS]/

MENFP).

The Emergency Education Program recommended the establishment of a system that

would allow personalized tracking of students and would provide support to students

encountering troubles. This system aimed to reduce school dropout and repetition. The

Emergency Education Program, through the “million schoolbags operation” distributed

school kits with textbooks (recycled), pens, slates, etc.

Recently, MENFP introduced new modules of reading at secondary schools as part of

USAID’s Improving Training for Quality Advancement in National Education

(ITQANE) project.


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page x

In addition to these experiences, there are other initiatives that have been launched by

socioeconomic entities and civil society organizations. However, these initiatives are still

conducted on a small scale without being generalized or supported, and most initiatives have

targeted literacy among older individuals or improving remedial skills of students. Teaching the

basic elements of reading seems to remain the responsibility of preschool, for which there is a

curriculum and a teacher’s guide. However, access to preschool education, depending largely on

private initiative, is limited and not universal. For the year 2012–2013, the gross rate of

enrollment in preschool was 60 percent in all types of preschool institutions (traditional, modern,

public).11 It is within the context of this movement aimed at promoting reading in schools

initiated by these different studies and actions, that USAID and the MENFP have launched this

broad study. This component concerns the second topic, analyzing the contribution of preservice

teacher training in preparing teachers to teach reading in Arabic.

Textbook analysis. This analysis is based on a set of criteria designed to answer the following

research questions:

Do the textbooks reflect the evolution in academic research related to reading instruction?

Is reading being taught explicitly or implicitly in the pedagogical guide and the textbook?

What are the criteria that may improve the quality of the Arabic language textbook in

primary education?

These questions are further guided by the answers to more specific questions, such as:

What are the general characteristics of a good reading textbook and the quality control

criteria they should meet (and subsequently, the criteria used to assess and analyze the

textbook?

Is improving the quality of the textbook enough to make the student acquire the tools of

reading—and make the student an independent reader?

Is it possible to improve reading competency in the absence of strong initial teacher

training in this regard?

With this in mind, the textbook analysis represents the practical application of the pedagogical

curriculum and the basis for the content to be taught. The textbook is a key tool for enabling

children to acquire the objectives of the Arabic language curriculum.12 For this reason, the

analysis of the textbooks is a first step towards being able to improve them as a teaching and

learning tool.

11 Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Direction de la Stratégie, des Statistiques et de la Planification,

Division des Etudes et des Statistiques [National Ministry of Education, Directorate of Strategy,

Statistics,and Planning, Division of Studies and Statistics] Recueil statistique de l’éducation [Record of

Education Statistics] 2012– 2013.

12 Daawuud Darwiiš Halas. (2007).


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page xi

Methodology - Scope. The present study is limited to analyzing the Pedagogical Guidelines; the

textbook specifications and the first unit of the select, available textbooks; and the teacher’s

guide of the first three years of primary school, adopted by the Ministry of National Education

and Vocational Training (MENFP) in Morocco since 2002. Table 2, below, shows which

textbooks were available on the market and which were consequently selected for analysis.

Table 2. Availability of textbooks

kitaabii illughat al’arabiyya (4)

fii riHaab llughat

al’arabiyya (3)

muršidi fii llughat

al’aarabiyya (2)

al mufiid fii-llughat

al’arabiyya (1) Grade level

Yes No No Yes Grade 1

Yes Yes Yes No Grade 2

No No Yes Yes Grade 3

From now on referred to as: (1) al mufiid, (2) murchidi, (3) fii riHaab, (4) kitaabii.

The research team, made up of teachers and researchers from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

(AUI), an expert from RTI International, and inspectors and Arabic language teachers from

public and private institutions in the region of Meknès-Tafilalet, looked at the above texts and

extracted the vocabulary, sentences, and paragraphs for analysis. This study was conducted in

two stages: at first, the focus was on identifying the type and nature of the words, then extracting

sentences and paragraphs in the texts. In the second stage, the focus was on the content of texts,

reading comprehension, and assessment.

Methodology – process. The team established a methodological framework covering the

objectives, instruments, and procedures for the study, which was submitted to the MNEFP

Department of Curricula, and validated through discussion and feedback on their part. The study

took place between May 19 and June 12, 2014. A training workshop was held from May 24 to 29

at AUI, in which experts introduced concepts of reading and evidence-based practices in reading

instruction, presented and discussed the framework of the study and the methodology of the

analysis, and explained to participants how to use the suggested analytical tools. The participants

were given practical, hands-on training on the analytical process using samples of text. They

were divided into groups in so that every group was responsible for analyzing the textbooks of a

given school level, presenting and analyzing data and writing a report about the results of the

study.

The first unit of the textbook available was analyzed according to a set of general themes,

including:

Distribution of objectives in accordance with Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy (recall –

understanding – application – analysis – composition – assessment)

Formulation of objectives in a procedural way (specific – measurable – attainable –

realistic – timely)


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page xii

Focus of objectives on developing language as a competence (reading – writing –

listening – speaking)

More specifically, the page-by-page review collected detailed information on the following

elements of the content:

Text readability. Includes the sentence, style, composition, and nature of the text

presented to the student: scientific, literary, narrative, theatrical, or philosophical; the

number of paragraphs in the lesson; the way in which they are divided; and the scientific

terms and the values in the lesson

Assessment. Presence of methods for learner assessment

Aesthetics: Includes the drawings, illustrations, font and size, page layout/text density,

clarity of colors, print and paper quality.

Study tools. Instruments used for the quantitative analysis of the textbook were designed to

capture the extent to which the different components of reading are explicitly present. They were

adapted from instruments previously validated during a similar study conducted by RTI in Egypt.

The analytical tools covered the following.

Vocabulary

Phonemic awareness

Fluency

Reading comprehension (according to text type)

Sentence and grammar analysis tool

Text book characteristics tool

Gender analysis


Research on Reading in Morocco: Curriculum and Textbook Analysis Final Report, Page 1

1. Introduction

1.1 Overview

A child’s success in school depends to a large extent on reading skills that are developed

between 4 and 8 years old. There is a strong correlation between the amount of time a student is

engaged in reading in and out of school and the student’s ability to decode words, write, note

dictation correctly, use a robust vocabulary, comprehend what is read, and understand grammar

and syntax. Being able to read is also a lever for personal, academic, and professional success.

After the first three years in school, reading becomes the key that opens the door to studying

academic subjects such as history, science, and other subjects. Research demonstrates that

students who have difficulty reading in Grade 3 have little chance of catching up with their

peers, and that those who are weak in reading cannot understand the homework and classroom

exercises assigned to them.13,14 Accordingly, they have difficulty succeeding in school.

Moreover, this situation can lead to school dropout and repetition, which are increasingly

difficult to rectify after the third year of primary school.15 It is therefore essential to detect and

diagnose reading problems as early as possible and to provide students with necessary supports

to help them avoid persistent academic problems throughout their educational careers.

The objective of this study is to review the Morocco National Curriculum (Livre Blanc) and

Pedagogical Guidelines (Guide Pédagogique [Pedagogical Guidelines], 2009), the textbook

specifications (Cahier de charges [CDC], 2011), the textbooks, and the teacher’s guide for

Arabic language lessons in Grades 1 to 3. This review seeks to highlight the extent to which

textbook content is compatible with the pedagogical principles stated in the National Curriculum

(according to the Pedagogical Guidelines) and the national recommendations for textbook

production specifications.

Moreover, this study seeks to analyze the pedagogical approach promoted in teaching Arabic to

young learners. It also examines how reading is presented in the textbooks and teachers’ guides

as a competence on its own, and as a tool to apply in other subject areas. This is done through

several guiding questions:

Is reading instruction explicitly or implicitly presented in the Pedagogical Guidelines and

in the textbook?

13 Eakle, A. J., Garber, A. M. (2003). International reports on literacy research: Canada. Reading Research

Quarterly, 38(3), 414-17.

14 Stanovich, K.E. (2008). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the

acquisition of literacy. Journal of Education, 189(1/2), 23-55.

15 McClelland, M.M., Acock, A.C., & Morrison, F.J. (2006). The impact of kindergarten learning-related skills on

academic trajectories at the end of elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21(4), 471-

490. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2006.09.003

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2006.09.003



Do instructional methods presented in the textbooks reflect the increasing body of

evidence-based research related to how students learn to read in Arabic?

What opportunities are there to improve students’ reading competency in the absence of

strong initial teacher training in this area?

Accordingly, this study presents the results of the curriculum and the textbook analyses, taking

into account that the latter represents the implementation of the educational curriculum and

encompasses the subject matter that is supposed to enable pupils to achieve the Arabic

curriculum objectives.

This study emphasizes that it is necessary to adopt explicit instruction of basic components of

reading in order to build reading competencies in Arabic in the early grades. This can be

achieved through ensuring the explicit teaching of the five components of reading (phonemic

awareness, alphabetic principal, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension) via student

books and instruction methods, in addition to the application of evidence-based pedagogical

principles of teaching Arabic.

1.2 Importance of early reading

Learning to read is a universal skill that must be explicitly and systematically taught. It starts

with the development of oral language competencies, which eventually progress to independent

reading.16 Oral language—ability to speak and listen—provides an essential foundation for

successful reading. In every culture, children learn language at home through listening, speaking,

and interacting with adults and others in their environment. This process takes place in a natural

and expected way in almost all cases and in all languages. Although building oral language

competencies is a natural process, developing reading skills is not. According to Brown,17 the

mechanics of learning to read take place during a key stage of the child’s life—between 4 and 8

years old. During this stage, a child learns the relationship between sounds and letters, combined

sounds and syllables, meaningful sounds and words, and finally words and the message of a

sentence.18 In addition, a child’s recognition of letters and words with clear meaning in different

reading contexts undergirds the cognitive mechanisms of phonetic and alphabetic reading that

are necessary for mastering all components of reading, which then lead to fluent comprehension

of texts.19

16 Primary National Strategy. (2006) Primary framework for literacy and mathematics. Department of

Education and Skills. Crown publishing. Retrieved from http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2006-primary-national-strategy.pdf

17 Brown, D. H. (2001) Teaching by principles: and interactive approach to language pedagogy. Second

edition. New York: Longman. 18 Anthony, J. L. Lonigan, C. J. Driscoll, K.Y. Phillips, B. M. and Burgess, S. R. (2003). Reading

Research Quarterly, 38 (4), 470-487. 19 Ehri, L.C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading,

9(2), 167-188.

http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2006-primary-national-strategy.pdf



Honig20 indicated that decoding ability in first grade predicts 80 to 90 percent of reading

comprehension in the second and third grade. This stage of learning to read also requires that the

school and the teacher provide conditions favorable to successful reading so that students can

learn to read for the sake of learning and for pleasure in the coming years.

Research clearly demonstrates that pupils who are weak in reading in the first three years face

many academic barriers in keeping pace with their peers. As they get older, pupils may resist

being corrected by the teacher when reading aloud in front of their classmates. This

psychologically affects their performance and may affect their self-esteem. During adolescence,

students are acutely cognizant when academic abilities are not on par with their respective grade

level. These pupils are more at risk of school dropout.

The ability to read and understand text is the key to learning in the academic context, as success

in any subject is predicated on it. Clearly, the ability to read and comprehend what is read opens

the door to learning. It is imperative, therefore, that educational institutions make it a primary

aim to support learners in their first three years of schooling so that they are able to overcome

any difficulties related to reading.

1.3 Importance of the textbook

Textbooks are of vital importance in the teaching-learning process because of their inherent

characteristics,21, 22 textbooks

give an overview of a subject area and how it may be taught;

present the basic information, ideas, and concepts in a curricular area;

demonstrate educational reforms to teachers when curriculum and teaching methods

change;

contain the subjects and images that illustrate what the pupils read; and

help develop values, skills, and ethics in students through content and images.

Well-crafted textbook products are an essential ingredient in the critical learning that takes place

in schools; they help learners master a subject and provide solid guidance for the teacher.

20 Honig, B. (1998). Preventing failure in early reading programs: A summary of research and instructional best

practice. In W.M. Evers (Ed.), What’s gone wrong in America’s classrooms (pp. 91-116). Stanford, CA:

Hoover Institution Press.

21 Elley, W. B. (2000). The Potential of Book Floods for Raising Literacy Levels. International Review Of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift Für Erziehungswissenschaft, 46(3/4), 233-255.

22 Daawuud Darwiiš Halas, 2007. The quality of the Arabic language book for primary classes of minimum essential

stage from the standpoint of teachers in Gaza province.

. معايير جودة كتاب لغتنا العربية للصفوف الأولية من المرحلة الأساسية الدنيا من وجهة نظر معلمي ومعلمات الصف في 2007، داود درويش حلس

محافظة غزة.



1.4 The stages of reading development

Children learn to read in a series of stages, inside and outside of school. Reading specialists often

describe these stages in different ways, but the phases remain consistent in terms of essential

learned skills.23

Pre-reading stage. Children simulate the process of reading without actually reading. This stage

starts with understanding the meaning of reading and its requirements. The learner starts in this

stage to understand that everything that one says can be written or read.

Beginning reading stage. Children start to pay attention to the details of print and the way in

which the letters and words, representing sounds and words of the spoken language, are printed.

Children come to understand sounds are represented by written symbols. In order to help

students in this stage, it is necessary to introduce the symbols’ system to them in a simple,

explicit manner. It is obligatory in this stage to coach learners in reading the symbols through

suitable texts that may help them segment the word and connect word parts together.

Learners in this stage will be able to recognize word units and will be able to distinguish letters

from words, distinguish between the letters that are similar in form (for example, the group: ،ب، ن

,[saad] ساد، [qaad] قاد، [jaad] جاد، :and between words that rhyme (ج، ح، خ :and the group , ت، يـ، ث،

etc.).24, 25 Beginning readers should also be able to distinguish the stress of the sound, short

sounds, long sounds, and, in addition, identify and differentiate the smallest unit of sounds

(phonemes). Comparing rhyming sounds and words at the sound, syllable, or word level makes it

easier to identify and reproduce them. For this reason reciting, singing, and listening to rhythms

of the language are necessary practices that can be used to develop this skill of phonemic

awareness. Learning Qur’anic texts and poetry can develop and strengthen the ability to hear

assonance and rhyme.26,27

One study on reading achievement found that oral comprehension improved for five-year olds

who were exposed every day during preschool, over a period of five months, to story reading in

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). 28 The results also showed that these children had a richer

23 Primary National Strategy. (2006)

24 Hazoury, K.H., Oweini, A.A., & Bahous, R. (2009). A multisensory approach to teach arabic decoding to students

with dyslexia. Learning Disabilities -- A Contemporary Journal, 7(1), 1-20.

25 Lyon, R. G. (1999). Education research: Is what we don't know hurting our children? Statement to the House

Science Committee Subcommittee on Basic Research, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved January 9,

2002, from the World Wide Web: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/crmc/cdb/r_house.htm

26 Surty, M.I. (2006). The science of reciting the quran. The Islamic Foundation. Markfield: Leicestershire

27 Tibi, S. (2006). [ طيبي، سناء عورتاني ] Early Intervention Procedures for the Prevention of Reading Failure. Arab

Journal of Special Education 8 (1):126-178 [المجلة العربية للتربية ][ إجراءات التدخل المبكر في الوقاية من الفشل في

[القراءة

28 Feitelson, D., et al. 1993 Effects of listening to story reading on aspects of literacy acquisition in a diglossic

situation. Reading Research Quarterly 28 (1): 70-79.



vocabulary from which to draw on in retelling stories that they heard, using sequential images as

a guide.

Fluency stage. Becoming a fluent reader is the next essential phase in learning to read. Fluency

refers to the ability to read letters, sounds, words, sentences, and paragraphs with automaticity

and accuracy and at a reasonable rate for understanding the text. Studies show that the slow

reading of words hinders reading comprehension due to the way the short-term memory

functions29, 30 Fluency is a sign that the mechanics of letter and word recognition have become

automatic, and those automatic mechanics allow the student to read with speed and to focus

cognitive processes on understanding. Fluency is therefore a foundational component of reading

comprehension.

As part of building fluency, readers learn to automatically recognize words when they frequently

appear in common language use in the language of instruction. For this reason, textbooks or

early grade readers are often designed with frequent word repetition to support reading and

vocabulary development (for example, Ali loves his mother; Ali loves his father; Ali loves his

sister). This process draws on recalling main features of the visual stimulus. Pupils with weak

short-term memory and poor decoding skills often cannot distinguish familiar words when they

see them. This difficulty strongly weakens the reading ability of these pupils. 31, 32

Students need to have access to texts that can be easily understood and whose meaning can be

predicted. In order for these texts to be comprehended quickly with minimal effort, it is helpful

that the texts are relevant to the learners. Fluency increases with practice. Practice enables the

student to read with less frustration. It is expected that classrooms provide a suitable

environment for learning to read using interesting books for children, such as stories with

exciting drawings and colors.33

Children need to learn how to decode words quickly and accurately, whether the words are in

isolation or in a sentence, so that they can acquire fluency. Teachers can help students develop

fluency by:

using a functional and concrete vocabulary that reflects the students’ daily activities;

providing pupils the opportunity to read the same thing many times with support and

feedback;

29 Abadzi, H., Crouch, L., Echegaray, C.P., & Sampe, J. (2005). Monitoring basic skills acquisition through rapid

learning assessments: A case study from Peru. Prospects 35(2):137-156.

30 Wagner, D.A. (2011) Smaller, quicker, cheaper: Improving learning assessments for developing countries,

International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris.

31 Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

32 Vellutino, F.R., Fletcher, J.M., Snowling, M.J., & Scanlon, D.M. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia):

What have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychologyy and Psychiatry, 45(1), 2-40.

33 Brookshire, J., Scharff, L.F.V., & Moses, L.E. (2002). The influence of illustrations on children’s book

preferences and comprehension. Reading Psychology, 23(4), 323 – 339



identifying students’ reading levels and providing texts that suit this level; and

employing teaching practices that continually monitor students’ mastery of skills in the

classroom.

However, according to the conclusions of the other research studies carried out under this

research on reading in Morocco34, many teachers address letter identification, word and sentence

reading in the classroom, but fail to address fluency and comprehension as specific skills that can

be developed with practice. Teaching fluency means bridging the gaps between decoding,

automatic recognition of the word and understanding. Given the importance of this subject, there

are many studies about reading speed and the number of words the pupil is expected to read in a

given level. Reading fluency is measured by two criteria: 1) reading a given number of words in

one minute, and 2) correctly reading a given number of words in one minute.

Further establishing reading benchmarks by grade provides teachers with an objective method

for monitoring progress of children throughout the year and governments with a method to

communicate performance standards. In many English first-language contexts, the level of

fluency necessary for comprehension is between 50 and 70 correct words per minute in Grade

1.35

Recommendations for English first-language learners are not necessarily the same as

recommendations for Arabic learners due to differences in the languages. For example, in Arabic

words consist of roots with different forms of vocalization that can have many different

meanings: ،ملك، ملك، ملك، ملك، ملك، ملك etc. Only by reading the entire phrase can the reader of

Arabic be expected to read with ease and fluency. Therefore, the rate of reading, in terms of

number of words per minute, must take into consideration whether all sounds are spoken and the

ambiguity that words can have depending on the context. That said, fluency, as it is defined in

English context, provides only an indication of the method to adopt to define the number of

words per minute. Characteristics of Arabic language must be taken into consideration in

establishing fluency norms in that language.

Reading to learn stage. During the early reading stages, focus is on the mechanics of reading.

Over time, concentration moves to reading to learn. Reading motivation becomes

increasingly important in this phase. In order to reach the ultimate objective, the students need

help becoming active and efficient readers. They need clear instructions and understanding of

tools and strategies that enable them to understand and remember the main ideas of the text.

34 RTI International (2014). Research on reading in Morocco: Analysis of initial teacher training. Final report:

Component 2. Report prepared for USAID under EdData II; RTI International (2014); and Research on

reading in Morocco: Analysis of teachers’ perceptions and practices. Final report: Component 3. Report prepared for USAID under EdData II.

35 Rasinski, T., Homan, S., & Biggs, M. (2009). Teaching Reading Fluency to Struggling Readers: Method,

Materials, and Evidence. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 25(2/3), 192-204.

doi:10.1080/10573560802683622



They also need help integrating the information contained in the text with their prior knowledge

in order to construct learning and deepen their understanding.

2. About this Study

2.1 Objectives of the analyses

Curriculum analysis. The National Education and Training Charter (La Charte Nationale de

l’Education et de la Formation, 1999) uniquely establishes foundational principles of the

Moroccan educational system. The inception of this document was exceptional in that

participants and stakeholders arrived at a consensus on the essential precepts surrounding

religion, civilization, and society. The document recognizes the importance of further developing

the teaching of Arabic, making provisions for confronting contemporary challenges.

Accordingly, the Arabic curriculum was adopted as a concrete measure to achieve these goals

while addressing the needs of the learners. It stresses the necessity of being conscious of the

expectations of students and their social, artistic, intellectual, psychological, emotional, and

physical needs and of making learners the center of interest, thinking, and action during the

process of education and training. It also promotes achievement of its goals through developing

self-confidence, openness to others, and positive interaction with the social environment,

regardless of its different levels, and through appreciation of work, diligence, and perseverance.

The achievement of these objectives led to adopting the concept of “competency” in the Arabic

language curriculum through the gradual construction and interaction between the learner,

knowledge, and the environment. This is achieved through adopting a set of principles, namely:

Interactive learning, instead of learning by rote

Continuity, in which every stage established a foundation for the subsequent one

Complementarity, in which there is no separation between linguistic and cultural

knowledge

Production, which focuses on creating unique speech (not choral recitation), whether

sentences, grammatical structures, or longer presentations

This study aims to analyze the competency of reading as it is presented in the Arabic language

textbook and teacher’s guide for the first three years of primary school in Morocco, and

determine the extent to which the books comply with:

the pedagogical principles stated in the “Arabic language curriculum” mentioned in the

primary education Pedagogical Guidelines; and

the parameters of the specifications for textbook production, as well as the textbooks

themselves.



This part of the study seeks to:

shed light on the curriculum and how to execute it in the context of recent evidence in the

teaching of reading;

describe the pedagogical approach used in Arabic language teaching and the extent to

which it meets the needs of students;

analyze the theory adopted by the Arabic curriculum (whole word, or global method)

compared to the phonetic method of teaching Arabic reading in the early grades, and the

relative promotion of either method in the textbooks reviewed;

highlight the generally accepted pedagogical principles of reading instruction (known as

the five fundamental components of reading: phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle,

vocabulary knowledge, fluency, and comprehension) and the degree to which they are

present in the textbooks, given the result of recent research on teaching reading in Arabic;

and

outline general curriculum criteria and examine the pedagogical principles that are

included in the Arabic language textbook.

Textbook analysis. The above information provides the background for the analysis of the

Arabic language textbook and the teacher’s guide. This analysis is based on a set of criteria

designed to answer the following research questions:

Do the textbooks reflect the evolution in academic research related to reading instruction?

Is reading being taught explicitly or implicitly in the pedagogical guide and the textbook?

What are the criteria that may improve the quality of the Arabic language textbook in

primary education?

These questions are further guided by the answers to more specific questions, such as:

What are the general characteristics of a good reading textbook and the quality control

criteria they should meet (and subsequently, the criteria used to assess and analyze the

textbook?

Is improving the quality of the textbook enough to make the student acquire the tools of

reading—and make the student an independent reader?

Is it possible to improve reading competency in the absence of strong initial teacher

training in this regard?

With this in mind, the textbook analysis represents the practical application of the pedagogical

curriculum and the basis for the content to be taught. The textbook is a key tool for enabling

children to acquire the objectives of the Arabic language curriculum.36 For this reason, the

analysis of the textbooks is a first step towards being able to improve them as a teaching and

learning tool.

36 Daawuud Darwiiš Halas. (2007).



2.2 Methodology

Scope. The present study is limited to analyzing the Pedagogical Guidelines; the textbook

specifications and the first unit of the select, available textbooks; and the teacher’s guide of the

first three years of primary school, adopted by the Ministry of National Education and

Vocational Training (MNEFP) in Morocco since 2002. Table 3 below, shows which of all

textbooks were available on the market and which were consequently selected for analysis.37

Table 3. Availability of textbooks (repeat of Table 2)

kitaabii illughat al’arabiyya (4)

fii riHaab llughat

al’arabiyya (3)

muršidi fii llughat

al’aarabiyya (2)

al mufiid fii-llughat

al’arabiyya (1) Grade level

Yes No No Yes Grade 1

Yes Yes Yes No Grade 2

No No Yes Yes Grade 3

From now on referred to as: (1) al mufiid, (2) murchidi, (3) fii riHaab, (4) kitaabii.

The research team, made up of teachers and researchers from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

(AUI), an expert from RTI International, and inspectors and Arabic language teachers from

public and private institutions in the region of Meknès-Tafilalet, looked at the above texts and

extracted the vocabulary, sentences, and paragraphs for analysis. This study was conducted in

two stages: at first, the focus was on identifying the type and nature of the words, then extracting

sentences and paragraphs in the texts. In the second stage, the focus was on the content of texts,

reading comprehension, and assessment.

The process. The team established a methodological framework covering the objectives,

instruments, and procedures for the study, which was submitted to the MNEFP Department of

Curricula, and validated through discussion and feedback on their part. The study took place

between May 19 and June 12, 2014. A training workshop was held from May 24 to 29 at AUI, in

which experts introduced concepts of reading and evidence-based practices in reading

instruction, presented and discussed the framework of the study and the methodology of the

analysis, and explained to participants how to use the suggested analytical tools. The participants

were given practical, hands-on training on the analytical process using samples of text. They

were divided into groups in so that every group was responsible for analyzing the textbooks of a

given school level, presenting and analyzing data and writing a report about the results of the

study.

The first unit of the textbook available was analyzed according to a set of general themes,

including:

Distribution of objectives in accordance with Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy (recall –

understanding – application – analysis – composition – assessment)

37 See Annex 1 for full references of the textbooks.



Formulation of objectives in a procedural way (specific – measurable – attainable –

realistic – timely)

Focus of objectives on developing language as a competence (reading – writing –

listening – speaking)

More specifically, the page-by-page review collected detailed information on the following

elements of the content:

Text readability. Includes the sentence, style, composition, and nature of the text

presented to the student: scientific, literary, narrative, theatrical, or philosophical; the

number of paragraphs in the lesson; the way in which they are divided; and the scientific

terms and the values in the lesson

Assessment. Presence of methods for learner assessment

Aesthetics: Includes the drawings, illustrations, font and size, page layout/text density,

clarity of colors, print and paper quality.

2.3 Study tools

Instruments used for the quantitative analysis of the textbook were designed to capture the extent

to which the different components of reading are explicitly present. They were adapted from

instruments previously validated during a similar study conducted by RTI in Egypt. The

analytical tools covered the following.

Vocabulary

Phonemic awareness

Fluency

Reading comprehension (according to text type)

Sentence and grammar analysis tool

Text book characteristics tool

Gender analysis

3. Curriculum Analysis

3.1 The White Book (2002)

Primary school in Morocco lasts for six years, and is divided in two “cycles.” The first cycle (le

cycle fondamental) lasts two years, and the second cycle (le cycle moyen) from third to sixth

grades. Yet the National Education and Training Charter also introduced a new vision for

preschool education, for children from 4 to 6 years old, that associates preschool closely with

primary education. The White Book (Le Livre Blanc) is the main document that lays out the

national public school curriculum. According to the White Book, preschool is part of a

“necessary foundational phase for primary education by integrating these two years [preschool]



with the following first two years of primary education, resulting in a fundamental cycle that

lasts 4 years.” Through a pedagogy of “immersion and awareness,” this two-year cycle should

allow student to succeed in school through mastery of a set of basic competencies, among which

is the mastery of oral expression in the student’s native language. The latter would prepare the

child for reading and writing in the Arabic language.

Preschool. The White Book anchors the teaching of Arabic language in preschool through three

main components: communication, pre-reading skills, and writing (including penmanship). The

pedagogical guide matches these objectives and emphasizes that the ultimate goal is that learners

are able to properly express themselves in Arabic. The curriculum is guided by certain principles,

namely:

Oral communication aims to initiate students to standard verbal styles of speech,

implicitly introducing them to grammar and conjugation.

Teachers should be providing students with a functional vocabulary related to daily life

themes.

The entire alphabet is not covered in the preschool curriculum since this stage is meant to

prepare students for reading and not to acquire competence in reading. The alphabet is

part of the primary school curriculum.

According to the White Book, in the first year of preschool, the content of reading instruction

concerns a limited number of vocabulary words taken from areas of functional communication

and then used to demonstrate a target letter. The activity of “reading” in this case focuses on

recognizing words through playing reading games and using illustrated flashcards containing

those words. Note that the words themselves are not specified by the White Book.

In the second year, reading instruction begins more formally, starting with a simple sentence and

words that are related to a theme of oral communication and contain a target letter. Firstly, the

phrase is read as a whole, then the word containing the letter, and finally the letter is separated

and read. This letter becomes the focus of tracing and writing exercises.

The number of hours per week, out of a total of 25, allotted to Arabic language in preschool are

as follows in Table 4:

Table 4. Curricular hours per week for Arabic language subject areas

Subject

Number of lessons per week

Length of the lesson Total

Oral communication 4 30 minutes 2 hours

Preparing for reading 4 30 minutes 2 hours

Writing 2 30 minutes 1 hour



At the end of the second year of preschool, the learner should be able to master a set of school-

readiness skills, among which are the following, most closely related to reading and oral or

written expression:

Speak, listen, understand, and communicate with others;

Use symbols representing aspects of reality, which will develop skills in reading and

writing;

Develop good manners and social behaviors that will facilitate integration and

communication in society.

The preschool curriculum consists of educational activities representing 78 percent of the total,

actual hours in the year (the remainder going to recess and other downtime including school

arrival and departure). Skills targeted by these activities, as cited in the White Book, include:

Improving visual-spatial motor skills, in preparation for reading

Controlling finger movements and muscles in the hands, which will facilitate writing

Understanding classification, generalization, and symbols, within the limits of the

cognitive level

Understanding the spoken phrases, within the limits of cognitive level

Using a functional vocabulary related to themes in the local context

Becoming familiar with all of the Arabic alphabet using a simple vocabulary

Drawing a variety of line styles, in order to prepare for writing the alphabet

Drawing some letters of the Arabic alphabet and some simple words

Primary school. According to the White Book, 11 of 28 hours of instructional time are

allocated to Arabic language per week in Grades 1 and 2 of primary school, representing a total

of 374 hours per year. The curriculum is structured according to thematic units; each year is

divided into 8 units of three weeks. The three weeks are divided into two weeks of presentation

of the lesson and one week of review and evaluation. The four components of instruction are:

expression, reading, writing, and grammar. An important principle is that the “style, syntax,

morphology, and orthography” are presented implicitly in the first two years and become explicit

only in the third year of instruction. The White Book presents a detailed sequence for teaching

the letters of the alphabet during the first two years of primary school. Each letter is presented in

conjunction with the bi-weekly themes, as presented in Table 5 (Grade 1) and Table 6 (Grade 2),

below.

Table 5. Grade 1 curricular topics and introduction of letters

Weeks Oral communication Preparing to read Writing

1-2 Introduction and adaptation

3-4 I get to know my classmates

Words with the letter m [م]

Movement (joints)



Weeks Oral communication Preparing to read Writing

5-6 I am responsible for my things

Words with the letter b [ب]

Horizontal and vertical lines

7-8 I recognize the members of my family

Words with the letter (hamza) [ء] ‘

Horizontal and vertical lines

9 Evaluation and review

10-11 I recognize the parts of the body

Words with the letter l [ل]

Oblique lines

12-13 I maintain my health

Words with the letter s [س]

Dotted lines

14-15 I eat Words with the letter d [د]

Oblique and dotted lines

16-17 Evaluation and review

18-19 I am careful in the street

Words with the letter S [ص]

Curved and rounded lines

20-21 I know the days of the week

Words with the letter n [ن]

Curved and rounded lines

22-23 I use correct expressions of greeting

Words with the letter h [ه]

Spiral lines


26-27 I recognize fruits and vegetables

Words with the letter f [ف]

The letters f [ف] et m [م]

28-29 I recognize animals

Words with the letter k [ك]

The letters k [ك] et b [ب]

30-31 I celebrate the festival d’Al-Aîd

Words with the letter j [ج]

The letters j [ج] et l [ل]


34 End of year formalities

Table 6. Grade 2 curricular subject and introduction of letters

Week Oral communication Writing/reading preparation

1-2 Initiation and adaptation

3-4 I present my house Letters m [م] et b [ب]

5-6 I present my school Letters t [ت] et k [ك]

7-8 I visit neighbors Letters ‘ [ء] et h [ه]

9 Evaluation and review

10-11 I get dressed Letters r [ب]et l [ل]

12-13 I eat Letters d [د] et n [ن]

14-15 The seasons of the year Letters b [ب] et j [ج]



Week Oral communication Writing/reading preparation


18-19 I visit the school Letters s [س] et c [ع]

20-21 I recognize animals Letters t [ت] et H [ح]

22-23 I take care of plants Letters z [ز] et S [ص]


26-27 Insects Letters q [ق] et đ [ذ]

28-29 I walk in the street Letters x [خ] et š [ش]

30-31 I play with friends Letters ġ [غ] et T [ط]


34 End of the year formalities

As the tables above show, it takes a full two school years to cover the entire Arabic alphabet, at

the current required pace of one letter every two weeks. Yet at the same time, the curriculum of

Grade 2 is based on the presentation of one reading text per week. Similarly, as early as Grade 1

children are given dictation and copying exercises. More specifically, the skills targeted by the

end of Grade 2 in reading and writing are the following:

Read the Arabic alphabet with short vowels, la shadda, in the context of a corpus of

modern and variable vocabulary.

Read with comprehension from constant vocabulary (letters and words) and variable

(phrases and simple texts), taking into consideration correct pronunciation of phonemes

and punctuation marks.

Read simple prose and poetry, descriptive and narrative texts, and dialogs;

Write the letters of the Arabic alphabet correctly on their own, and in the context of

words and phrases, demonstrating care and perfect organization according to the models

of writing that are provided;

Rewrite words, phrases, and short paragraphs using punctuation marks;

Correctly write certain simple orthographic patters.

Write correctly certain simple exercises of style, syntax, and morphology.

Summary. The White Book’s primary purpose is to outline the number of hours by subject

throughout the year and, within subject areas, the sequence of instruction by theme and by week.

It communicates the general objectives of the curriculum in terms of pre-reading skills to

develop in preschool, followed by the study of letters, words, sentences, and prose texts in the

first two years of primary school. It provides some indication of the structure that units should

follow and the general framework for lesson delivery.

Theoretically, the White Book is limited to giving a list of objectives and activities for teaching

the Arabic language. Although it gives a sequence of letters and themes to cover each week, it

does not provide specific details about:



the most common vocabulary to teach;

how to identify phrases that are “aligned to the child’s cognitive level”

how to use a functional vocabulary related to themes that are close to the student’s reality

when the vocabulary has not been provided;

how to do dictation and copying exercises when the students have not even finished

studying each letter of the alphabet;

how to measure progress in vocabulary and oral expression;

what content authors of the textbooks should produce; and

how to present, in an abstract manner, all of the Arabic alphabet in a simple language

before even introducing concepts of print and the relationship between the written and the

spoken word.

Similarly, although the White Book mentions several times the importance of aligning activities

“to the cognitive level” of the children, it does not define cognitive levels or how to evaluate a

child’s level. In primary school, the curriculum prescribes the introduction of one letter every

two weeks; consequently, it takes two years to cover the whole alphabet. Moreover, in its

entirety, the White Book omits 5 letters of the alphabet: D [ض], th [ث], Z [ظ], w [و], y [ي]. It

appears that the thematic content takes instructional precedence over the linguistic or

pedagogical dimensions of the sequence of instruction. Although this global and communicative

approach to language expects specific details of language structure to be taught implicitly,

evidence shows that learning to read requires very explicit and direct instruction. Particularly in

the case of Arabic, research has determined that drawing on explicit instruction of word

morphology is associated with better early learning outcomes38.

As touched on previously, the bridge between preschool and primary school is not made explicit

in the White Book, which is a source of confusion for the reader. Is the first “cycle” of primary

school, according to the way the curriculum is designed, actually four years (two preschool plus

two primary school), or only two years of primary? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to present

the first cycle as four years long? But if this is the case, what happens to children who do not go

to preschool, which is not mandatory? In fact, the primary school reading curriculum is

dependent on what children would have learned in preschool, according to the preschool

curriculum.

Finally, the White Book gives no indication of

short and long vowels;

when they should be introduced; or

the point at which children should be able to read texts without short vowel markers.

38 Boyle, H., Al Ajjawi, S., & Xiang, Y. (2014). Topical analysis of early grade reading instruction (Project report for EdData II Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and Middle East). Research

Triangle Park, NC: RTI International. Retrieved at:

https://www.eddataglobal.org/documents/index.cfm?fuseaction=pubDetail&ID=707




From a practical standpoint, the preschool curriculum as it is presented in the White Book is an

ambitious project that is not implemented in reality, where most schools do not benefit from

preschool training. The two-year preschool curriculum should be integrated in the first two years

of primary school. This requires a rethinking of the curriculum for these first four years given the

reality of schools and classrooms for which it is destined. Such a revision would benefit from a

more rapid introduction of the letters of the alphabet, without sacrificing quality or depth of

instruction, giving the student a full “kit” of letters with which to attack word recognition and

decoding more easily. For example, in Egypt, each letter is taught in two lessons, and each

lesson lasts two days. Thus the whole alphabet is covered in the first year.

3.2 Pedagogical Guide (2009)

Content. The Pedagogical Guide, written after the Arabic language textbooks were published,

describes the content domains of the textbooks, the parts of each unit, and the number and

duration of lessons; this is reflected clearly in the textbooks. It also provides the general

pedagogical framework for carrying out lessons in the specific domains of Arabic language, oral

expression, reading, writing, and developing listening skills. It recommends the whole language

method for teaching these competencies.

The times allotted in the school week for the reading lesson, as described by the Pedagogical

Guide, are as follows, in Table 7.

Table 7. Weekly lessons by textbook

Reading component Number of lessons Lesson length

(minutes) Total

Grade 1

Pedagogical Guide 9 30 4h30min

Kitaabii 9 30 4h30min

Al mufiid 9 30 4h30min

Grade 2

Pedagogical Guide 8 30 4h

Fii riHaab 8 30 4h

Murchidi 8 30 4h

Kitaabii 8 30 4h

Grade 3

Pedagogical Guide 5 30 2h30min

Al mufiid 5 30 2h30min

Murchidi 5 30 2h30min



The distribution of reading lessons, according to the textbooks, corresponds to what is written in

the Pedagogical Guide. In Grade 1, children have a total of 4.5 hours per week of reading, 4

hours in Grade 2, 2.5 hours in Grade 3, and only 2 hours in Grade 4 (not shown in the table). By

Grades 5 and 6, only 1.5 hours are allocated to reading. In other words, as children advance in

primary school, classroom time dedicated to reading decreases.

According to the curriculum, themes covered in the first and second grades must be familiar to

the student and his or her environment, and they should be age-appropriate. Activities should be

adapted to the student’s motor skills development (games, for example). Table 8 provides the

order of the themes of the curriculum (from the Pedagogical Guide, p. 75). By Grade 3, the

themes become more abstract, but should still be adapted appropriately to the context. These are

only loosely connected to the themes presented in the White Book (see Table 5 and Table 6

above).

Table 8. Themes by week

Grades 1 and 2

1. The student and family

2. The student and school

3. The student and relations with the neighborhood and town

4. The student and the natural environment

5. The student, nutrition, health and sports

6. Cooperation in the life of the student

7. Ceremonies and festivals in the life of the student

8. Games and innovations in the life of the student

Grade 3

9. Islamic, national, and human values

10. Cultural and social life

11. Democracy and human rights

12. Social services

13. The world of innovation and creation

14. The natural balance and protection of the environment

15. Nutrition, health, and sports

16. Travel, excursions, and games



Underlying pedagogical principals and theory. The Pedagogical Guide suggests that teachers

start the Arabic language lesson, in Grades 1 and 2, with oral language practice. In the other

grades, children start by reading. Writing practice in Grades 1 and 2 is associated with reading

practice through copy and dictation activities. It is only in Grade 3 that children start free writing

exercises (essays).

As Table 8 above shows, the curriculum is divided into eight units. Each unit lasts three weeks.

The first two weeks are dedicated to presenting new lessons, and the third is for evaluation and

review.

The language lessons, according to the Pedagogical Guide (p. 75) should last 30 minutes for

Grades 1 and 2. This same amount of time is allocated to reading in the higher grades. This

changes when the schedule changes to accommodate the teaching of Amazigh (see p. 77).

According to the theory behind the Pedagogical Guide, children learn language as a whole, and

not in a fragmented manner. Language is used for facing various situations. The Pedagogical

Guide explains that “this is what allows a child to acquire his mother tongue and understand

implicitly its rules within two or three years. School needs to follow this example in its teaching

methods.”

The Pedagogical Guide adopted, from the White Book (2002), five general skills that together

make up a well-rounded student and citizen. The Guide defines them in terms of their relevance

to teaching Arabic (Table 9).

Table 9. General curricular competencies adopted by the Pedagogical Guide

Skill Definition in relation to Arabic language (p. 73)

Strategic “use the Arabic language to acquire grade-appropriate* knowledge and experience”

Communicative “acquire a functional vocabulary in relation to the learner’s life and which develops in line with the themes of the curriculum”

Methodological “Implicitly teaching the stylistic structures, syntax, and morphology of the Arabic language according to grade level, age and mental capacities”; “Reading, comprehension, and use of reading texts at multiple levels”

Cultural “the assimilation of the linguistic context is considered to be a basic element of social integration”

Technological “opening up to the world of technology and assimilation of advancements through language”

* It is worth noting that the Pedagogical Guide does not define “grade-appropriate.”

These skills are related to

existence (self-knowledge and relationships with others, investment in cognition and

values to be embedded in the personality of every student);



communication inside and outside the school; and

channeling knowledge for the sake of openness to the natural and social surroundings.

The competency-based approach, as described by the Pedagogical Guide, puts the learner at the

center of the learning process, encouraging him or her to take responsibility for learning. The

learner does not learn information for exams, but instead acquires a skill that can be drawn upon

anytime and anywhere. Therefore, the learner “learns how to learn.” This function- and structure-

oriented approach gives the learner the basic tools to apply the knowledge. The characteristics of

the competency-based approach can be summed up as follows:

Gives attention to the active role of the learner in the teaching-learning process

Encourages initiative and independence of the learner

Suggests meaningful learning activities that push learners to raise questions

Establishes links between what is learned and asks learners to consider their learning and

the learning strategies

The Pedagogical Guide concretizes of these skills and their components. However, it confuses at

time the skills with objectives and contents. Moreover, it does not clearly show the cognitive

domains in which these skills will be achieved.

The Guide provides two general descriptions of the learning objectives for pupils in the primary

grades:

Objectives related to skills and content, which include the ability to correctly express

oneself in Arabic and interact with others as well as the ability to organize time, be

disciplined, and develop mental and sensory abilities.

Objectives related to values and social standards, which comprise the absorption of

human, national, ethical, and religious values; unshaking belief in solidarity, cooperation,

tolerance, and honesty; knowledge, systems, and basic rules for engaging with the natural

and sociocultural environment.

Methods of teaching Arabic reading. The curriculum prescribes many things that students

should know, but these objectives, particularly those related to skills and content, are introduced

in a general way and without specifying a systemic, sequenced approach to Arabic language

learning in the early grades.

The Guide alludes to several methods for teaching reading in Arabic.

The first builds on the smallest and easiest units of the language to recognize—the

letters—rather than composed elements such as words, paragraphs, and texts, which are

more difficult to recognize—the partial syntax method (méthode syntaxique (partielle)

.(الطريقة التركيبية )الجزئية(

The second promotes learning letters according to the sound they make (“mmmm”

instead of “mim”). The student is expected to recognize the symbol of the letters and their

different sounds, as a function of their vowels, germination, and casual markers



(nuunation). The method works from easier to harder, from simple to complex--the

phonics or phonetic method, (La méthode phonique/phonétique (الطريقة الصوتية().

The third method is known as “analytical” or whole language (analytique ou globale

( (الطريقة التحليلية )الكلية ). In this method students begin with texts they understand before

moving to independent letters without any meaning. This method builds on prior

knowledge of the students that they bring from their environment in order to construct

meaning and perceive what is written.

Finally, the last method is known as mixte (الطريقة المزجية), and is characterized by the fact

that it teaches language units with meaning (sentences) and promotes understanding

through images. The method introduces words that include the target letter. The words

are analyzed phonetically in order to isolate the target letter and give it independent

status.

In Grade 1 the Guide provides the following principles for carrying out the reading/writing

lesson.

Letters are using the global method, starting from the whole, moving to the part, then

coming back to the whole, which carries the meaning. In other words, instruction starts

with texts whose meaning is known to learners before moving to separate letters, which

carry no meaning.

Letters are read as they are pronounced in their normal context and not in their “name”:

a=ay, b=bee, c=cee, etc.

Letters are taught beginning with the most easily pronounced and most frequently used

and proceeding to the most difficult and the least frequently used.

Complementarity between the senses, including use of gestures, movements, colors,

boards, modeling clay, etc., facilitates learning the letters.

Links are established between writing and reading, as writing, even simple copying, also

requires reading.

Synchronization is accomplished between the visual and the audio. It is this

synchronization that creates the link between different information (one of the behavioral

bases of learning); for example, showing only the written part that is being read and

hiding the parts that are not being read.

Diacritic markers are taught in relation to the drawn letters and not separately (damma

[u], kasra [i], fatHa [a].

Grammar are taught rules implicitly.

Previous knowledge is integrated, incorporating games and activities (songs, music,

theatre, etc.).

The Guide focuses on the necessity of teaching letters starting with the easily pronounced and

written and most frequently used letter and continuing to the most difficult and least frequently



used one. The choice to begin with the most frequent will allow the learner to rapidly increase

the repertoire of words that the he or she can start reading and composing.

Second year

The first unit is devoted to introducing one reading text every week, followed by a set of

lessons aimed at addressing reading difficulties. In Units 2 to 8, each week is devoted to

introducing many and various reading texts (prose, poetry).

Focus is on comprehension and the main functions of reading in society and daily life as

a means of communication and integration;

Reading aims to develop comprehension not limited only to spelling and good

pronunciation.

Silent and independent reading allow for better understanding.

Third year

The third year focus is on three reading types, namely: functional, complimentary, and poetic.

All of these are related to the eight fields (Table 10).

Table 10. Reading types targeted by unit

Session 5 Session 4 Session 3 Session 2 Session 1 Unit week

Poetic 1 Complementary text

Text Basic 1 Functional text

First



Second



Third

Summary. The Pedagogical Guide was written after adoption of the current textbooks, and its

primary function is to help teachers understand how to implement reading lessons in conjunction

with the textbooks. The Guide concludes by providing suggested teaching strategies at different

levels. Examples provided are based on the principles of the global method, however the Guide

doesn’t actually provide definitions of the different methods suggested (analytic, phonic, global,

etc.) Suggested instruction is then subject to major difficulties that can be summarized as

follows.

Decoding is not targeted as a skill even though it contributes to more fluent reading, first

of words and subsequently of phrases, which in turn contributes to comprehension.39, 40

39 Cunningham, P.M. (2000). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.

40 Ehri, L. and Nunes, S. (2002). The role of phonemic awareness in learning to read. In A.E. Farstrup & S.J.

Samuels (eds). What research has to say about reading instruction. (3rd Ed.), pp. 110-139. Newark,

Delaware: International Reading Association.



The Pedagogical Guide, like the White Book, does not specify a list of functional

vocabulary based on MSA, nor does it show how to find the key words to target.

Developing a functional vocabulary list would help to standardize achievement across the

country and would facilitate interpretation of national evaluation measures.

The absence of a list of frequently used words limits the ability of teachers and authors to

develop leveled texts that would also help children understand texts more rapidly, even if

they have not mastered letters or decoding skills.

Moreover, like the White Book, the Pedagogical Guide also repeats the importance of adapting

instruction to the level of the child and his or her age and mental aptitude. However, the Guide

does not determine the criteria relative to these levels in primary school.

The Guide does not provide clear strategies for evaluating objectively whether cultural

competencies were acquired or not. As such it is difficult to plan a strategy aligned to supporting

learners who are falling behind.

The Guide discusses the mastery of the Arabic language (Modern Standard Arabic) for social

integration; however, this integration remains very general and does not take into consideration

the sociolinguistic context of Morocco, especially since social integration is done in maternal

languages and not in MSA. The Guide should be more specific in determining the nature of the

standard context from a sociolinguistic standpoint. Is the language used in primary school meant

to be a compromise between the dialect and classic Arabic, or is it just a simplified version of

classic Arabic? Is there a bridge between the colloquial language and the language with which

social integration is actually achieved?

Since technological competencies are one stated goal of the curriculum, it is worth reflecting in

the future on what types of technology could be used to support the Arabic language textbook,

(the content of which hasn’t changed since 2002).

Finally, since the textbooks were produced prior to development of the Pedagogical Guide, one

wonders what impact the Guide has on the content of the textbooks, and why the textbook

authors have not updated or improved the content of the books in light of the framework given

by the Guide.

3.3 Analysis of the national textbook specifications (2002)

The specifications for writing and production of textbooks identify characteristics that should be

considered during the writing of the pupil’s book and the teacher’s guide. These specifications

are followed by publishers who submit their textbooks in response to a bidding process.

Student textbook

The characteristics cover three types of design considerations:

Methodological

Pedagogical



Aesthetic and technical

Methodological considerations. The specifications (2002) give priority to oral language

development (listening and speaking), and advance progressively from oral language to writing.

They recommend using amusing situations that motivate children to interact, discover new

situations, speak, and make meaning from things in the local environment. The specifications

imply a focus on phonemic awareness and decoding that is not immediately apparent in the

textbooks or in the emphasis given to them in the White Book or Pedagogical Guide. For

example, the specifications require “adoption of an approach based on …creating links between

what is read and what is written; the sound and the word; the word and the phrase; the phrase and

the paragraph; the image, pronunciation and meaning; the auditory, the visual and

comprehension.” They also requires he textbooks to integrate the use of different types of

content—short texts, songs, theater, self-directed games—for developing communicative

competency and imagination.

Pedagogical considerations. The elements that are required by the textbook specifications

under the heading “Educational and pedagogical characteristics of the textbook” cover ways in

which the books should:

facilitate the use of the book for the pupil, such as including the general structure (e.g.,

“present the objectives,” “highlight definitions in a colored text box,” “include a detailed

table of contents”);

develop content, including alignment of content with the curriculum and schedule;

promote patriotism, respect for the Islamic religion, sustainable development, and other

international themes; take into consideration the “personality” and “cognitive level” of

the children; and bridge other disciplines and school subjects; and

promote teaching strategies or activities; for example, promoting interactivity, question

and answer, reinforcement of concepts, and problem solving.

It is important to note that in this category, the textbook specifications ask editors to design the

content of books so that they can be considered a source of “self-teaching” (auto-apprentissage)

and self-evaluation even though there is little, if any, evidence that children can actually learn to

read on their own. In fact, some research stresses the importance of peer learning and

collaboration in learning to read, especially in multilingual situations41. Among the list of 19

characteristics for content development, the emphasis is on thematic content (such as citizenship

and human rights) as well as functional objectives such as “developing a scientific method and

creative initiative.” However there is nothing related to fundamental components of learning to

read, such as letter-sound knowledge, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, fluency

development, and comprehension strategies. The specifications do, however, mention that the

textbooks should use vowel markers (tashkil).

41 Turkan, S., Bicknell, J., & Croft, A. (2012) Effective Practices for Developing Literacy Skills of English

Language Learners in the English Language Arts Classroom. ETS Research Report. Princeton: ETS.



These instructions are clearly very ambitious, and require textbook editors to cover a large

amount of thematic content in addition to basic reading skills. It is not surprising, therefore, that

many fall short of adhering to all of the criteria. However, one does wonder how the books were

evaluated and why some of them were accepted if they were lacking conformity in several areas.

Instructions for using the textbooks are offered in most textbooks. However, Grade 1 textbooks

address only the teacher, while textbooks for higher grades address the students in a language

that may not be understood by the average student. Not a single book provides a general plan at

the beginning of each section or part. No textbook states the intended (set of) skills to be taught

or learning outcomes for each lesson except the textbook Murchidi. All of the textbooks fail to

refer to the learning gains in the previous level except Murchidi for Grade 2. This particular

failure undermines a coherent, leveled, unit-by-unit approach especially when the textbooks are

not part of a series. The textbooks do not help the students gain knowledge about and motivate

their interest in new developments in the sciences, technology, and education, even by the

technological standards of 2002. Given that the textbooks have not been updated since 2002,

they do not reflect the standards of today. The textbooks do not make any allusion to

supplementary or any other education materials or aids to enhance students’ learning.

Furthermore there is no apparent content in the books that is designed to help students develop

higher order skills like scientific reasoning, problem solving, and creativity, although it is

questionable whether it is really the role of early grade reading textbooks to do so.

On the other hand, most textbooks conform to the guidelines by providing extension activities

for each theme, providing specific elements and language rules in frames and in different colors,

and including detailed tables of contents (except the Al Mufiid for Grade 1). Additionally the

contents of the textbook are in agreement with the educational guidelines, the school curriculum,

and the required topics and themes. All the textbooks have texts that aim at developing the

learner’s sense of belonging to the nation, and their content reflects reality. But they do not

reflect regional and local characteristics, nor do they take into consideration the learner’s

personal traits; moreover, they do not help the learner integrate into the global community.

Topics like immigration, global warming, democracy, distance learning, knowing the other, etc.,

are absent in the textbooks. The textbooks contain a limited number of texts that expose learners

to issues related to education, sustainable development, health, and environment, and all of the

books conform to the standards of respect for the religion of Islam, for the principles and rights

established for individuals and groups, and for the treaties and international conventions ratified

by the kingdom of Morocco.

Table 11 below shows the degree to which the various textbooks conform to the above standards.



Table 11. Conformity of books to textbook specifications (content-related aspects)

Specifications of CDC

Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3

Al Mufiid Kitaabii Murchidi fi riHaab Al Mufiid Kitaabii Murchidi

1. Contains specific instructions that facilitate its use

No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

2. Provides the overall organization of each part or section at the beginning

No No No No No No No

3. Provides a description of targeted competencies


4. Introduces the expected objectives at the beginning of each lesson or unit

No No Yes No No No Yes

5. Offers expected extensions for each part or section of the textbook


6. Highlights the targeted pieces of knowledge and rules by coloring them and placing them within frames

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

7. Contains detailed tables of contents


8. Refers, at each level, to essential learning gains in the previous level

No No Yes No No No No

Specific characteristics of the textbook contents

9. Contents are in agreement with the educational objectives and the school curriculum


10. Organized around topics or themes of the unit







11. Presents recent developments in the areas of the sciences, technology, and education


12. Contributes to enhancing the student’s national identity, with regional and local characteristics, all in accordance with the student’s personal traits


13. Contributes to the student’s opening up to the global context


14. Takes into consideration the students’ age factor/range, their knowledge and linguistic levels, and their cognitive capacities


15. Includes new issues in education on sustainable development (health, environment, and civic engagement)


16. Respects the religion of Islam, and the principles and rights established for individuals and groups, and the treaties and international conventions ratified by the kingdom of Morocco


17. Helps the student in the development of the scientific approach and the spirit of initiative and creativity


18. Refers to educational aids that facilitate teaching and learning







19. Compatibility of photos, drawings, and designs with textbook topics

No No Yes Yes No No No

20. Aids in the development of self-teaching and is a source of knowledge


21. Opens up to other school courses and course units


Characteristics of learning activities and exercises in the textbooks

22. Contains learning activities that are suitable for the academic level of the students


23. Problem-based approaches to activities, with situations capable of highlighting the importance of the target knowledge


24. Includes a variety of activities that take into account individual differences among students in order to facilitate the achievement of the main learning objectives


25. Contains activities that are related to the child’s perceptible reality


26. Exercises are ordered according to their degree of difficulty or easiness







27. Exercises use appropriate knowledge, skills, and attitudes that the students are expected to gain


28. Uses practical drills that make use of already acquired learning gains in order to strengthen them


29. Exercises allow the student’s self-evaluation and promote problem-solving strategies




Technical and aesthetic considerations. The specifications present a determined set of artistic

characteristics for the textbook, including the size (21cm x 27 cm), paper weight, number of

pages, colors, style of letters, font and size, binding type, and guidelines for images and

drawings. Specific instructions are given for the cover, including title, identifying elements,

year, and price.

Table 12 shows how much textbooks respect the specifications of the CDC.

Table 12. Themes by week

Textbooks


Al Mufiid Kitaabii Murchidi

fii riHaab

Al Mufiid Kitaabii Murchidi

1. Size Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

2. Paper Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

3. Size Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

4. Colors Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

5. Letters (See the section about pictures and drawing below)

6. Pictures and drawings

(See the section about pictures and drawing below)

7. Cover Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

8. Authors Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

9. Page design (See the section about pictures and drawing below)

10. Form Adjustment


11. Assemblage Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Pictures and drawings in the textbooks are expected to support and facilitate learners’

understanding of the texts. Most of them, however, are not related to the themes in the textbook

units, except for those in fii riHaab for Grade 2, as Figure 1 below shows.



Figure 1. Relationship between illustrations and text

However, in Murchidii for Grade 2, 86% of the pictures and drawings are related to the textual

content. On the other hand, the other textbooks contain more incongruent pictures and drawings;

88% of them in Al mufiid for Grade 1; 81% in Kitaabii Grade 1; 96% in Kitaabii Grade 2; 85%

in Al mufiid Grade 3; and 56% in Murchidii Grade 3.

Characteristics of the teacher’s guide

The specifications document explains that the teacher’s guide is “the primary supporting

document for reinforcing teacher training related to cognitive, educational and pedagogical

developments in the field.” As they do for the student textbook, the specifications for the

teacher’s guide request a number of artistic and technical characteristics for the production of the

guide; these include the color and weight of paper, colors, font size, images, and drawings.

With regards to educational and pedagogical characteristics of the teacher’s guide, the

instructions in the specifications document maintain that:

it should align to the curriculum, educational objectives, and content of the textbook;

it should have instructions for its use, including general clarifications about teaching

methods that the manual is promoting and specifically instructions for using kinesthetic

techniques to help develop oral language competency;

it should present objectives, competencies, and extension activities related to each lesson;

It should provide the teacher with tools and strategies for evaluation; and

it should include a table of contents, bibliography, and additional resources, especially

those that can help “enrich the teacher’s knowledge and the development of the teacher’s

self-directed learning.”

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

al mufiid, 1 kitaabii, 1 muršdii, 2 fii riHaab, 2 kitaabii, 2 al mufiid, 3 muršdii, 3

The degrees of congruence of the pictures and drawings with the contents in the units

Related Not related



Summary. The textbook specifications, like the other guidance documents described in this

section, focus at a high level of ambitious theoretical objectives (e.g., teaching scientific

reasoning, creativity, social integration, etc.). However, they neglect to provide guidance on

specific reading-focused objectives and methods, such as teaching letters, promoting phonemic

awareness, and strategies for increasing fluency and comprehension. They do highlight the

importance of kinesthetic methods for building oral communication skills, which is in line with

evidence-based practices for bilingual learners.42 They could go one step further in pointing out

how these methods can also support reading skills and how oral language fluency is a critical

first step in learning how to read in addition, as well as important for socialization. More

importantly, the guidelines do not provide domain-specific instructions concerning, for example,

what sequence of letters to introduce, what level of sentence structure to use (length,

complexity), or what vocabulary to focus on.

These specifications also do not specify whether the bidders should include supplementary

materials such as a student workbook or exercise book to support the textbook. This is surprising

given the focus on self-directed learning.

The specifications do not say whether or not the bidders must have any particular qualifications

or must justify the soundness of the content and methods they are providing in the textbooks.

They also do not spell out a timeline or procedures for submissions, including whether or not the

Ministry reserves the right to request changes in the final product or if the editors and the

Ministry will work together in any way to finalize the documents, and in what timeframe.

3.4 Conclusions

Overall, analysis of the curriculum sheds light on the prevailing mindset regarding learning to

read in Arabic. This mindset reflects the belief that reading happens easily, or naturally (even is

self-taught), once oral language competency has been acquired. In the current context of

Morocco, where most children speak a dialect of Arabic at home, if not one of the Berber

languages (see Preface), the curriculum is correct to place a significant emphasis on

communicative (oral) competency and use a variety of methods, including kinesthetic, to raise

oral language skills. Much of this competency-based approach resembles methods used to teach

Arabic as a second language to adults, who may already know how to read a different language.

For all of the emphasis on adapting the lessons to the ‘mental level’ of the children, all textbooks

fail to take into consideration the learners’ multilingualism and the role of pre-school education

in creating discrepancies in to their school readiness. The specific pedagogical adaptation to

teaching reading in the early grades based on how children learn to read in Arabic is not

apparent. For example, there is no mention of storytelling or time dedicated to reading books

aloud as part of this oral language development. Most importantly, there is little emphasis on

direct and explicit instruction of basic components of reading—letters, letter sounds, phonemic

awareness, vocabulary, decoding, word roots or morphological pattern, fluency building, and

42 Turkan, S., Bicknell, J., & Croft, A. (2012).



comprehension strategies. Making teaching reading more explicit does not mean that the focus

on themes, values, and higher-order skills cannot be accomplished. What is certain, however, is

that children cannot learn to read implicitly, but they can learn to read early if significant time

and intensity are given reading instruction in the first year of primary school.

4. Textbook Analysis

4.1 Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness allows the learner to perceive words pronounced as small units of sound,

not as a single unit of sound. This awareness includes the ability to listen and learn to play with

sounds.

Scientific research shows that phonemic awareness as a mental and linguistic capacity develops

even before children have been exposed to print. This pre-awareness subsequently helps to make

the association between the letters of the alphabet and their sound in a given language, as

learning the letters of the alphabet necessarily involves learning their sounds. Activities that can

help strengthen phonemic awareness are:

awareness of rhyming words (saal / qaal, jibaal / jimaal, etc.);

division of words into syllables (mu / cal / li / ma / tun til / mii / Djun);

division of words into sounds (kitaab = k + i + t + a + b); and

removal or substitution of sounds to form new words (replace the sound [s] by [j] in

saamic for jaamic).

These activities are part of direct and explicit instruction of the relationship between sounds and

their symbols, and will help children acquire reading fluency more rapidly.43

Activities related to phonemic and phonological awareness, e.g., sound recognition, syllable

segmentation, manipulation of sounds, rhyme, etc., are absent in the textbooks for the first year.

4.2 Alphabetic principle

The alphabetic principle is the relationship between the sound and the symbol, or the written

letter. How do the Moroccan textbooks address this fundamental component of learning to read?

Teaching the Arabic alphabet in the first grade

The Pedagogical Guide emphasizes teaching letters beginning with the easiest to pronounce and

to write, and the most frequent, before moving on to those that are more difficult and less

43 Levin, I., Saiegh-Haddad, E., Hende, N., et Ziv, M. (2008). Early literacy in Arabic: An intervention study among

Israeli Palestinian kindergartners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29: 413-436.



frequent.44 There is no objective basis given in the Guide indicating which letters are “easy” or

“hard” to write and pronounce. However, studies exist to show that the most frequently used

Arabic words begin with: 1. .3 ,[laam] لام .2 ,[alif] لفأ .4 ,[nuun] نون .5 ,[’yaa] ءيا واو

[waaw], 6. هاء [haa’], 7. ءبا [baa’]. (See Annex 2.) Analysis of the grade 1 textbooks Kitaabii

and Al Mufiid show that all of the letters are taught, and this is accomplished by by the end of the

7th unit in the case of Kitaabii. Since the textbook specifications don’t give any detail on the

sequence to follow for introducing the letters, it is not surprising to find that each book does it

differently, as in Table 13, below.

Table 13. Order of introduction of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, by Moroccan

textbook

Book Order of letters (from right to left)

Kitaabii

،[y] ي ،[m] م ،[r] ر ،[H] ح ،[b] ب ،[l] ل ،[t] ت ،[s] س

خ ،[θ] ث ،[q] ق ،[w] و ،[k] ك ،[f] ف ،[j] ج ،[š] ش

[x]، ه [h]، ع ،[’] ء [c]، غ [ġ]، ن [n]، ص [S]، د [d]، ذ

[đ]، ط [T]، ظ [Đ]، ز [z]، ض [D].

Al Mufiid

د ، [l]ل ، [r]ر ، [’]أ ، [h]ه ، [t]ت ، [b]ب ، [k]ك ، [m]م

[d]، ن[n] ، ي[y] ، ج[j] ، س[s] ، ف[f] ، ح[H] ، ز[z] ، ذ

[đ]، ص[S] ، ق [q]، ع[c] ، خ [x]، ش [š]، غ[ġ] ، ط[T] ،

. [T]ط ، [w]و ، [θ]ث ،[D] ض

By way of comparison, Table 14 shows the order presented in other available Arabic textbooks.

Table 14. Order of introduction of the letters of the alphabet, foreign textbooks

Country Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Unit 5 Unit 6 Unit 7 Unit 8

Egypt Oral preparation

' أ. 1

b ب. 2

t ت. 3

θ ث. 4

j ج. 5

H ح. 6

x خ. 7

s س. 1

š ش. 2

S ص. 3

D ض. 4

T ط. 5

Đ ظ. 6

c ع. 7

Texts

44 See Part 1 of this report. RTI International (2015). Research on reading in Morocco: Curriculum and textbook

analysis (Component 1, Part 1). Prepared for USAID under EdData II.



Country Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Unit 5 Unit 6 Unit 7 Unit 8

d د. 8

đ ذ. 9

r ر. 10

z ز. 11

ġ غ. 8

f ف. 9

q ق. 10

k ك. 11

l ل. 12

m م. 13

n ن. 14

h هـ. 15

w و. 16

y ي. 17

Yémen

–س. 12 - ح. 11 - ص. 10 - ف. 9 - ق. 8 - ت. 7 - د. 6 - ر. 5 - ن. 4 - ل. 3 - ب. 2 -م. 1

-ذ. 21 -خ. 20 - ك. 19 - أ. 18 -ز. 17 -ط. 16 ش. j - 15 ج. 14 و. 13

غ. 28 ظ. 27 - ث. 26 - ه. 25 - ي. 24 - ض. 23 ع. 22

Saiegh Haddad (2008)45 suggests that fricative sounds such as:

.θ ث ,j ج ,H ح ,x خ ,đ ذ ,Z ز ,S س ,š ش ,ġ غ ,f ف ,S ص ,Đ ظ

may be pronounced independently, which is what differentiates them from other letters. This

makes them difficult for children to pronounce; it also makes it more difficult for children to

develop a phonemic awareness of the sounds of these letters. This is also evident in the nasal

consonants: م m ن n, as well as liquids such as: ل l ر r.

On the basis of a neuro-linguistic study, Taha (2014) reports that the impact of letter connectivity

on visual processing (visual load) is more noticeable for beginning readers than advanced ones.

It recommends introducing in textbooks for beginning readers the words whose letters are not

connected (دورو wuruudun “pink”) or are partially connected (رون nuurun “light”) before

introducing more complex words, namely those whose letters are completely connected (لسع

casalun “honey”).46

In the book Al Mufiid (Grade 1) we find that the lesson starts with reading a sentence composed

of words that use the letter that is being taught; in this case, the target letter is mim (m). Figure 2

provides an example.

45 Saiegh Haddad, E. (2008). The acquisition of basic skills in reading, writing: conception of examination.

http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/DCBE2E90-9535-4886-843F-51554F5D1067/150296/Mivdak_Kita_A_arab.pdf

متاح على .مهارات أساسية في اكتساب القراءة والكتابة: التصور الفكري للفحص (2008) اليانور صايغ حداد،

46 Taha, H. (2013). Reading and Spelling in Arabic: Linguistic and Orthographic Complexity. in Theory and

Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 721-727, Finland: Academy Publisher.





Figure 2. Example from the first lesson of Al Mufiid:

Transcription: ‘umm ‘umayma mucallimatun. Source: Al Mufiid, p. 5

Some remarks regarding the sentence:

The sentence’s three words contain the letter (m).

The sentence focuses on words that contain the letter (m) at the end of the word (Um),

two in the middle (Oumaima, Mu’alima), and at the beginning and the middle of the

word (Mu’alima). The other exercises present words comprising the letter (m) in different

positions.

The letter (m) was vowelized with “a” three times (fatha and with “u” two times ( ـــ

(Damma ”The sentence did not contain a word where (m) is vowelized with “i (.ــــ

(kasra ـــــ).

The text contains words with nuunation, or “tanwiin.” Nuunation constitutes a challenge

for pupils in both writing and pronunciation (Mu’alimaton).

The next sentence in the lesson contains words that are difficult for the learner to decode

in the first lesson, such as Taskono.

The letter is not presented in its long-vowelized form. There is no obvious comparison

between the letter’s long-vowelized form and short-vowelized one.

Another example (Figure 3) comes from the textbook Kitaabii. The title of the section is “I

build and I read,” implying that the teacher and child should construct or assemble the text.



Figure 3. Extract from the first lesson of Kitaabii:

Here we note the following:

The target letter is (س) (s).

The text contains 14 words, 4 of which comprise the letter (s).

The letter (s) occurred twice at the beginning in (سلمى Salma) and twice in the middle

سرتها Jalasat and جلست) Usratiha); although no word contained (s) at the end.

The letter (s) occurred three times vowelized with short “a,” and the sign that represents

the absence of a vowel (sukuun) once. The words did not present (s) vowelized with “u”

and “i.”

The text contains a sentence comprising the letter ش (ch). This may constitute a

difficulty as this letter resembles س (s).

Furthermore, at the bottom of page 7, the text gives a list of isolated (out of context) words

(Figure 4).

I build and I read The target letter is: s

jalasat salmaa maca ‘usratihaa ‘ilaa lmaa’ida. ‘akalat salmaa xubzan wa zubdatan, wa šaribat

Haliiban.

Salma is seated at the table with her family. Salma ate bread and butter and drank

milk.

Salma est assise avec sa famille à table. Salma a mangé du pain et du beurre, et elle a

bu du lait.



Figure 4. Continuation of the first lesson of Kitaabii:

Figure 4 shows that:

All of the words contain the letter “s.”

The examples present the letter “s” in first position and in the middle.

There are no words that contain the letter “s” at the end.

There are words in which “s” is long-vowelized (saaHa suur , ساحة .(غسيل ġasiil , سور

There is a word in which “s” has no vowel (Usra) and another word in which the letter

“s” is stressed (ma’saka). Stress and lack of vowels constitute a challenge for the learner,

especially in the first lesson of the book.

These words have no relationship to the preceding text on the same page (the image

presented in Figure 3, above).

On the next page, the textbook provides a sentence with four words, of which two have the target

letter (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Continuation of the lesson for letter “s” in Kitaabii

Source: Kitaabii, page 8

Again, these examples have no connection with the story that started the lesson. It is difficult,

from the words listed under the title “I read and I write” to establish links between the different

components of the lesson. In other words, the lesson misses the opportunity to use repetition as a

key element of reinforcement and consolidation of linguistic concepts.

‘usra sitar sutra madrasa massaaka ġasiil suur saaHa su sutra sa madrasa suu suur saa saaHa ‘us ‘usra si sitaar saa massaaka sii ġasiil

I read and I write

šaribat salmaa ka’sa Haliib.

šaribat --- lmaa ka’-- Haliib.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .



Together these examples provide a picture of how letters are taught. In addition to the above

points, we notice the following:

The letter “s” was not shown at the end of the word in the first and second letters,

whereas the third sample gives the word (kaâs) which ends with “s.” In the activity “I

read and I write,” learners are expected to be familiar with the letter “s” in all positions

and ready to decode it through the reading exercise.

The activity “I read and I write” did not target the competence of identifying the sound of

the letter, distinguishing what is being heard, and developing the decoding competence.

Although we have highlighted only one example from one book, the other lessons follow a

similar pattern, and this analysis allows us to conclude that the textbook alone is not adequate for

efficiently teaching the Arabic alphabet to beginning readers. This does not mean that teachers

aren’t doing other, more simplified, enrichment activities outside of what is in the textbook, or

that children haven’t learned basic skills earlier (in preschool). However, it does raise questions

about the likelihood that all students are getting an equitable chance to learn how to read through

standardized, leveled materials.

4.3 Vocabulary development

Concrete vs. abstract words.

In this study “concrete” refers to real, tangible objects and materials that are perceptible to the

senses. Images, actual objects, and gestures can support learning concrete words, while the

meaning of abstract words comes through experience and context. Use of concrete words is

among best practices in vocabulary development, since children naturally have a repertoire of

more concrete vocabulary than abstract,47 and presence of abstract ideas is associated with higher

levels of reading texts. This study analyzed the proportion of concrete and abstract words used in

stories and exercises of the textbooks. The results of the analysis for Grades 1 and 2 is shown in

Figure 6.

47 Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2006). Leveled books (k-8): Matching texts to readers for effective teaching.

Heinemann.



Figure 6. Proportion of abstract (abstrait) vs. concrete (concret) words in Grades 1 and 2

The only edition with books in both Grade 1 and Grade 2 is Kitaabii. The analysis shows that

the proportion of concrete words to abstract words is slightly higher in Grade 1, but by the first

unit of Grade 2 Kitaabii has a total of 169 words, of which 106 are concrete (47%) and 90 are

abstract (53%). An additional 80 words are prepositions and linking words that are classified as

neither concrete nor abstract, such as:

oh ، يا so ، هكذا when ، متى how ، منذ since ، ف and ، و in ، في at ، إلى with مع

Table 15 shows examples of concrete and abstract words.

36%

52%

64%

48%

al mufid kitaabii

A. Grade 1

Concret Abstrait

36%47%

77%

64%53%

23%

fii rihaab kitaabii muršidii

B. Grade 2

Concret Abstrait



Table 15. Examples of concrete and abstract words

Abstract words

Page Transcription Word Meaning

14 Sadaaqaatii صداقتي My friendships

9 jamiila جميلة Beautiful

14 fariHat فرحت happy

Concrete words

6 bint بنت Girl

6 lmadrasa المدرسة School

9 casal wa xubz عسل وخبز Honey and bread

Source: Kitaabi

It is only in the textbook Murchidi that concrete words outnumber abstract words in Grade 2. In

Kitaabii the proportions are almost equal, but there are many more abstract words in Fii RiHaab

than in the other books.

By third grade, abstract words represent an even larger proportion of words in the text (Figure 7).

In the Grade 3 textbook Al Mufiid there are 534 words (excluding connectors), of which 108 are

concrete (20%), and 426 are abstract (80%). Connectors and prepositions (295 total) represent

36% of the total when added to the calculation.

Figure 7. Proportion concrete and abstract words in Grade 3 textbooks

If in the first grade Al Mufiid was already using more abstract words than concrete ones, by

Grade 3 the level of difficulty has increased substantially, given the presence of a large

proportion of abstract words, as shown in Figure 9.

108176

426

549

295 332

al mufid mursidii

Grade 3

Concrete Abstract Grammar



Word frequency

Studies of the development of reading competence stress that the repetition of vocabulary in

reading texts is necessary for learners to acquire fluency and understanding.48 The reoccurrence

of a word in one text or in different texts allows learners to evolve from decoding to automatic

recognition, and this increase in reading speed supports increased comprehension. In addition,

the frequency of word repetition helps learners identify the word in different contexts, which

allows them to make use of the word in different subject areas. Therefore this study also sought

to determine to what extent the textbooks support vocabulary development through repetition.

Grade 1. The analysis of the Grade 1 textbook revealed that word repetition is very low. For

instance, in Kitaabii, out of 204 words, 91 words occurred only once (45%); 12 words occurred

twice (6%). In Al Mufiid, out of 195 words in the first unit, 79 words occurred only once (49%)

and 13 occurred twice (7%).

These results reflect that Grade 1 students are overwhelmingly presented with more new words

than familiar ones, and words are not reinforced through repetition in different contexts.

Contrary to good educational practices, neither textbook adopted repetition as a strategy for

building vocabulary and fluency. The proportion of words reoccurring more than 10 times did

not exceed 2% in Al Mufiid.

If we consider that Arabic is almost a second language for Grade 1 pupils (most of whom use an

Arabic dialect or a version of Amazigh in the home), the development of oral language fluency

and then of fluent reading requires increasing the repetition of new words used in reading texts.

Grade 2. As in Grade 1, the proportion of words that occurred only once is drastically higher

than that of words that are repeated two or more times. The number of words that a learner sees

only once in the first unit of Grade 2 is 116 for Kitaabii, 146 for Fii RiHaab and 158 in

Murchidi. Words that occurred twice are as follows: 18 in Kitaabii; 15 in Fii RiHaab and 6 in

Murchidi, and so forth, as shown in Figure 8.

48 Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2006). Leveled books (k-8): Matching texts to readers for effective teaching.

Heinemann.



Figure 8. Frequency of word repetition in Grade 2

No words are repeated more than five times in any of the textbooks. This is far from an effective

level of repetition according to research-based standards that suggest that contextual repetition

(hearing or reading the same word in the same context) is important for learning new words,

although the actual number of times a word needs to be repeated depends on many factors.49

Grade 3. After counting all the words of two units of Murchidi and Al Mufiid, we again note

the absence of a strategy for vocabulary repetition within texts and between texts within a unit

(Figure 9). In Murchidi the total of words used in all functional, complementary, and poetic

texts is 464, of which 341 (73%) occurred only once; 65 occurred twice, 24 occurred three times,

and 17 occurred four times. The same applies to Al Mufiid: of 455 words total, 345 (76%)

occurred only once, 62 words occurred twice, 23 words occurred three times, and 10 words

occurred four times.

Figure 9. Frequency of word repetition in Grade 3

49 Horst, J. S., Parsons, K. L., and Bryan, N. M. (2011a). Get the story straight: contextual repetition promotes word

learning from storybooks. Front. Psychol. 2:17. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00017

116

1834

0

146

15 110

158

6 1 0

1 fois 2 fois 5 fois 10 fois ou plus

kitaabii fii rihaab muršidii

345

95

14 1

341

106

14 2

1 fois 2 à 4 fois 5 à 9 fois 10 fois ou plus

almufiid muršidii



This study has shown that the Moroccan textbooks for the first three grades are far from adequate

in meeting the needs of learners in the area of vocabulary development, including automatic

recognition of high-frequency words. Students are faced with an abundance of text, most of

which is composed of new words, before they have even become familiar with all letters of the

alphabet. In this context, it is not surprising that students find themselves struggling with basic

achievement, as evidenced by empirical studies in this sector (see Preface, Component 1 – Part

1). These challenges prevent students from pursuing learning and undermine the comprehension

and assimilation of content that lead to achieving a school’s fundamental objectives. The

difficulties that children face in Arabic language at the secondary level, according to reports by

teachers who participated in workshops to strengthen school achievement (2012–2013) include

the following:

Difficulty pronouncing certain letters when reading a paragraph of text

Inability to distinguish between the Hamza, which is a radical (hamzat qaTc), and alif,

which serves to support vowels at the beginning of a noun or adjective (hamzat waSl)

Problems linking the form of the letter with its corresponding sound

Difficulty reading long words

Poor reading comprehension

These difficulties, as reported by teachers, can only be the result of an absence of effective

strategy for teaching reading in the early grades. Figure 10 presents some specifications for

teaching vocabulary that are found in Egyptian textbooks, as an example.

Figure 10. Example specifications from Egyptian textbooks

Specifications for book production in the area of vocabulary:

Grade 1:

The textbook contains 250 new words with an average repetition rate of 12–15 times for each word.

The percentage of concrete words should be greater than the percentage of abstract words (ratio of 80%

concrete to 20% abstract).

Grade 2:

The textbook should contain 350 new words, with an average repetition rate of 10–12 times per word.

The percentage of concrete words should be more than the percentage of abstract words (ratio of 70%


Grade 3:

The book should include 400–500 new words, with an average repetition of 5 times per word, and reusing

words from Grade 1 and Grade 2.

The percentage of concrete words should be more than the percentage of abstract words (ratio of 60%


To conclude this section, it is clear that the ability of the Moroccan textbooks to support

vocabulary development and fluency is extremely limited. As described in the previous sections



related to alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness, teachers bear the responsibility for

developing and delivering word recognition and fluency-building strategies outside of the

textbooks. The content of the stories and exercises in textbooks appears to be primarily

concerned with the thematic unit rather than with the characteristics of the language and the

literacy development needs of the pupils. The textbooks miss the opportunity to strengthen both

thematic and language development capacities through more deliberate presentation and

sequencing of the language.

4.4 Fluency

Sentence length

Studies in reading acquisition have confirmed that sentence length has an effect on reading skills

development.50 Sentence length is one of the factors that increase complexity of sentence

structure and can prevent the student from reading correctly and seizing the meaning of the

sentence. The findings of the analysis of sentence length in each grade are presented in this

section.

Grade 1. The following chart (Figure 11) shows that sentence length, even in Grade 1, is

typically very long in the Moroccan textbooks. For example, out of 38 sentences in the first unit

of Al Mufiid, 23 (60%) were longer than 10 words. Similarly, Kitaabii presents 8 out of 29

(28%) sentences that are longer than 10 words.

Figure 11. Number of words per sentence, Grade 1

Most texts have titles of two or three words. However, the number of simple sentences composed

of three to four words—the kind that are more apt to help young learners acquire confident

reading skills—remains relatively small compared to the proportion of sentences that are much

longer.

50 Fountas & Pinnell (2006)

02

9

2 2

23

38

02 1

6

128

29

Un mot 2 mots 3 mots 4 mots 5 mots ouplus

10 mots ouplus

Nombre dephrases

Al-Mufiid Kitaabii



The type of phrase is an indicator not only of the difficulty level of the reading text, but also of

the difficulty in teaching the reading texts.

The following table (Table 16) compares the average number of words in the two first grade

textbooks with grade-level averages established for English and Arabic. According to this table,

the average sentence length in the textbooks is more closely aligned to the norm, even if the

distribution appears heavily biased towards lengthy sentences.

Table 16. Comparison of sentence length norms by grade

Average sentence length by grade

Grade level Arabic readability indicator51

Reading A-Z (English)

Kitaabii Al Mufiid

6.5 7 5.8 7.6 Grade 1

8.4 16.5 4 6.7 Grade 2

Note: Arabic readability indicator developed from a collection of texts used in the Jordanian curriculum.

Grade 2. The following graph (Figure 12) shows that the first unit of Fii RiHaab contains 66

sentences, of which 42% are sentences with between 5 and 9 words; 24% of Fii RiHaab

sentences have 10 or more words. This leaves about a third of sentences in the category of 1 to 4

words in length. The second grade book, Kitaabii, has a slightly lower proportion of sentences

in the range of 5 to 9 words (34%); 25% include 10 words or more, and 38% have between 2 and

5 words per phrase. Finally, in Murchidi we see that the text density (overall number of

sentences in the unit) is much lower than in the other two books. In Murchidi 45% of sentences

contain between 5 and 9 words, 35% of sentences have 10 or more words, and 25% of sentences

contain between 2 and 4 words. (Figure 12 includes the numbers. Refer also to Table 16 above

for average words per sentence in each book and grade level).

51 Abdel-Karim Al-Tamimi, Manar Jaradat, Nuha Aljarrah, and Sahar Ghanim (2014). AARI: Automatic Arabic

Readability Index. International Arab Journal of Information Technology, 11(4):370-378.



Figure 12. Number of words per sentence in Grade 2 textbooks

Grade 3. Consistent with those of Grades 1 and 2, the Grade 3 textbooks use mainly sentences

with 10 words or more. There are also far fewer sentences with fewer than 5 words, as shown in

Figure 13. Number of words per sentence in Grade 3 textbooks below.

Figure 13. Number of words per sentence in Grade 3 textbooks

Simple and complex phrases

The length of sentences is important, but equally informative is the sentence type and complexity

(Table 17). This analysis looked at sentence types (nominal and verbal sentences, indicative and

declarative), on the one hand and the complexity (simple or compound) on the other hand.

Grade 1. The analysis noted that first year textbooks comprise from 5 to 8 sentences in each text

and that verbal sentences (beginning with a verb) are the most common, with a proportion of

64% verb to 36% nominal sentences (beginning with a noun; see Figure 14. Number of noun and

29

5 6

28

16

66

17 7 7

1914

55

0 1 2 29 6

20

Un mot 2 mots 3 mots 4 mots 5 mots ouplus

10 mots ouplus

Nombre dephrases

fii rihaab kitaabii muršidii

2 2

16

37

57

0 2

17

33

52

1-3 words 4 words 5 words 10 words or more Number ofsentences

Al-Mufid Murshidy



verb phrasesFrom unit to unit, the proportions vary and verbal sentences become abundant in

reading texts.

At the level of simple and compound sentences, the analysis shows that Kitaabii relies much on

compound sentences, with a proportion of 59% compared to 41% for simple sentences.

Table 17. Example sentence types from the books

Al Mufiid Kitaabii Type

Oumaima arranges the pillows of the foyer

Salma was happy with Toutou bird’s friendship

Simple sentences

[Not included in the first unit]

Salma stood drying her hands with the towel and was surprised by her brother calling her: “Salma, Salma!”

Compound sentences

For beginning readers it is recommended to use short- to medium-length sentences and avoid

long, compound ones. Texts with simple phrases are less frustrating and easier to understand.

Compound sentences make the text more difficult for the novice reader.

Some research suggests the use of nominal sentences more than verbal ones in the texts intended

for early age children, and emphasizes keeping the main parts of the sentences close to each

other and avoiding use of subordinate clauses.

Figure 14. Number of noun and verb phrases

Considering the fact that sentence type and length help or hinder fluency and understanding in

reading performance, it is notable that the majority of sentences in Kitaabii are long and

complex, although there are more nominal phrases than verbal. Al Mufiid contains equivalent

numbers of simple and complex (compound) phrases, but it has more verbal sentences than

18

8

26

1

37 38

verbal Nominal Total of sentences

Al-Mufiid Kitaabii



nominal. However, the number of compound sentences in this textbook is enough to create

difficulties for reading learners.

Grade 2. The first unit of the books contained the following proportions:

Kitaabii contains 55 sentences, 33 of which are compound and 22 are simple.

Murchidi contains 22 sentences, 14 of which are compound and 7 are simple.

In Fii riHaab, there are 62 sentences, 36 of which are compound and 26 are simple.

These numbers translate into the following percentages (see Figure 15).

Figure 15. Percentage of simple and complex sentences

Table 18 below provides examples of different types of phrases in the Grade 2 books.

Table 18. Example sentence types from the books

Number of sentences

Sentence word length

Number Examples Page

Textbook: Kitaabii

92 10 words or more

2 Adam revised his lessons, arranged his school tools, and started looking for his uncle’s little house.

11

5 to 9 words 60 The family members started walking around the house.

6

4 words 10 How do I arrange the house supplies? 6

3 words 12 Is the address lost? 11

2 words 7 The house’s address 12

One word 1 Oh! 11

Textbook: Murchidi

10 words or more

9 The Imam of the mosque prayed for me while entering the house with men who learn the Koran by heart.

10

42% 40%

32%

58% 60%

68%

Fii Rihaab Kitaabii Murshidii

Simple sentence Complex sentence



Number of sentences

Sentence word length

Number Examples Page

5 to 9 words 9 I prepared soup, cheese, and eggs 6

4 words 2 The Cheikh asked me: Where is the Koran?

10

3 words 1 My family at night. 6

2 words 1 My uncle’s visit 14

One word 0 ------- ------

Declarative and expressive sentences

A declarative sentence is a sentence that contains an enunciation that may be true or false; e.g.,

“Knowledge is useless.” The statement in this sentence is false because reality tells us otherwise.

An expressive sentence is one that cannot be qualified as true or false. This includes sentence

types such as imperative, prohibition, interjection, interrogation, wishing, exclamation, oath,

praise, slander, etc.

Grade 1. The analysis of the first unit of Kitaabii and Al Mufiid shows that 92% of the sentences

in Kitaabii are expressive, as are 48% in Al Mufiid. The difference between the two textbooks

can be explained by the fact that Morocco’s textbook specifications did not include guidance on

this point.Figure 16, below, provides a breakdown of expressive phrase types.

Figure 16. Breakdown by expressive phrase type in Grade 1 textbooks

Grade 2. Declarative-style sentences outnumber expressive-style ones in the second grade texts.

The first unit of Kitaabii contains 39 declarative sentences and 32 expressive ones. The first unit

of Fii RiHaab contains 41 declarative sentences and 23 expressive ones, and of Murchidi, 13

declarative and 11 expressive sentences.

Kitaabii contains four expressive styles out of six:

Imperative: 2 examples, e.g., “Enter peacefully.” (page 6)

0% 0%

17% 17%

20%

0%

3%

0%

7% 7% 7%

0%

imperative negative exclamatory vocative interrogative optative

Al-Mufiid Kitaabii



Prohibition: 1 example, e.g., “Do not exhaust yourself.” (page 8)

Exclamation: 3 examples, e.g., “How beautiful is his face!” (page 17)

Interrogation: 26 examples, e.g., “What was the mother’s answer?” (page 17)

The book contained no wishing and interjection-style sentences, whereas the interrogative style

is predominant.

Murchidi contained four styles out of six:

Exclamation: 4 sentences, e.g., “What a wonderful night!” (page 10)

Interrogation: 13 sentences, e.g., “When will the film start?”

Imperative: 3 sentences, e.g., “Come and read.” (page 10)

Calling: e.g., “May God bless you” (page 10)

The book did not contain examples of prohibition and wishing

Fii RiHaab contained five styles out of six:

Imperative: 3 sentences, e.g., “Come in, look.” (page 11)

Exclamation: 1 sentence, e.g., “How beautiful it is!”

Interjection: 8 sentences, e.g., “Hey, Zaynab” (page 5)

Interrogation: 17 sentences, e.g., “What will be my role?” (page 18)

The book did not contain examples of prohibition and wishing. Therefore, the presence of styles

was different. In addition, the abundance of interrogative sentences contradicts the idea of

motivating pupils to raise questions themselves and discuss the text for the sake of

understanding. Figure 17 shows the breakdown by phrase type encountered in the Grade 2 texts.

Figure 17. Breakdown by expressive phrase type in Grade 2 textbooks

54%

0% 0%

17%

0%

29%

0%

55%

3% 1%4%

0%

37%

0%

64%

0% 0%

11%

0%

25%

0%

declarative imperative negative exclamatory vocative interrogative optative

Murshidii Kitaabii Fii Rihaab



Grade 3. Finally, in Grade 3 the textbooks’ style is predominantly verbal and compound

sentences of the expressive type, with the exception of Al Mufiid, in which declarative sentences

outnumber expressive ones. In the first unit of Al Mufiid there are seven lessons. These contain

21 paragraphs with a total of 52 sentences; 15 of these sentences are nominal, and 37 are verbal.

The first unit of Murchidi comprises seven lessons. These contain 14 paragraphs and 57

sentences, 26 of which are nominal and 31 are verbal. These findings suggest that pupils would

face difficulty reading these texts. Verbal sentences can be difficult to understand, particularly

because they require knowledge of conjugation and verb tenses as well as of the distinction

between strong and weak verbs. What complicates things is the high number of compound

sentences in the two books: 58, compared to only 24 simple sentences. In addition, in total, we

found 102 declarative sentences and 98 expressive ones.

Use of punctuation

Punctuation can break up a complex sentence into component parts. Punctuation is also a marker

of intonation, depending on the language (e.g., raising the voice at the end of an interrogative

sentence; lowering it before a period), helping the reader develop prosody. Although Arabic

contains criteria relative to sentence structure and punctuation, many of the textbooks use a loose

punctuation style that does not respect the predicative sentence structure of Arabic. This can

make sentences longer and is probably one of the obstacles that pupils face in learning to read

these texts. Although the textbook specifications urge publishers to use simple and clear

sentences, many textbooks do not respect punctuation rules to the extent that the “comma” or

“semi-colon” plays the role of the “full-stop.”

Textbook specifications must make reference to standards of punctuation use, and such

specifications should become part of the evaluation process. During both development and

evaluation of the textbooks, textbooks producers should ensure that punctuation is used to show

places to pause, stop, and start as well as voice tones and speech purposes. These elements

facilitate understanding during reading. The overuse of punctuation marks results in long

sentences, and may constitute a challenge for learners. They may not remember the content of

the beginning of the sentence when they are close to its end.

4.5 Reading comprehension

Strategies and objectives

Reading comprehension is the ultimate purpose of reading. If learners are able to read words but

they do not understand them, it is as if they cannot read them at all. Reading comprehension

means use of the highest processes of understanding and thinking during reading; comprehension

involves removing ambiguity in a text through the assimilation of context or through the

development of new meanings.



Developing reading comprehension skills comprises a set of strategies that are used during the

teaching process, such as the strategy of prediction, self-monitoring, questioning, summarization,

and more. Characteristics of pupils who can understand what is being read are as follows:

They use a set of comprehension strategies to deepen and enrich their understanding.

They are aware of the use of thinking processes and select the strategy to use during

reading, especially when they encounter understanding difficulties.

They are able to understand any subject if they apply the appropriate comprehension

strategy.52

Analysis of reading comprehension in the texts is based on focusing on the following:

Including explicit objectives related to comprehension strategies

Strategies of teaching reading comprehension

The literary genre of the textbook’s texts

Overall, we see that Moroccan textbooks focus on direct understanding but do not make use of

strategies or develop skills such as prediction, checking the guess, summarization, and others.

The following sections present in more detail the different elements of the analysis.

The teacher’s guide for Kitaabii in Grade 2 specifies that pupils should be able to build the

meanings of sentences, grasp the content of texts, and know sentence structure through the

relations among textual components, such as characters and setting. The present study found that

the textbook contains a number of performance objectives for direct auditory and reading

comprehension. For instance, Kitaabii targets grasping the general meaning of the text through

listening, understanding, and expressing its content as well as identifying the setting of events

and answering direct questions.

The textbook presents these skills in the form of exercises done by pupils or questions asked by

the teacher. These skills are introduced to pupils in the form of tasks that they execute through

the instructions of the teacher in order to grasp and remember the content of the text.

The strategies of teaching reading comprehension skills are limited to explanation and

discussion; the teacher reads the questions and pupils discuss by giving answers and make a

distinction between choices in case of choosing between multiple response questions. The

teacher then asks pupils to write the answers down. It is worth noting that these types of

exercises (reading multiple choice questions and writing down the answers) are included here

before all of the letters of the alphabet have been introduced.

In the Grade 1 version, each of the eight units of Kitaabii presents 5 listening texts, 10 reading

texts, and 1 poem. The listening texts are dominated by a large number of words and many long

sentences. Al Mufiid presents short sentences that comprise words with the target letter.

For Grades 2 and 3, every lesson includes a reading text in the form of a story or poem.

52 Brown, D. H. (2001) Teaching by principles: and interactive approach to language pedagogy. Second

edition. New York: Longman.



Monitoring comprehension

Assessment is a basic component in methodological skill-building in all linguistic activities that

aim to teach children how to read in Arabic. Building reading skills is done through stages, each

of which is based on the previous one; assessment is the mechanism used to detect learning

difficulties and acts as a corrective measure for all the components of the teaching-learning

process to help move learners from one stage to the next.

In this study, assessment means that all the activities presented in the textbook seek to monitor

the progress of pupils and their knowledge, acquisition of learning objectives, and reading ability

development on a regular basis. Research shows that effective teachers ask higher-level

questions that go beyond information recall or literal understanding, as well as using different

types of questioning involving different levels of comprehension.53

Grade 1. Our analysis focused on comprehensive assessment by classifying the subject areas

evaluated in the manuals by type according to Bloom’s taxonomy (Figure 18). We also tried to

observe the content and competences targeted by each textbook’s assessment.

The analysis reveals that the most-used questions in the first year editions of the textbooks are

objective questions (60% in Al Mufiid and 27% in Kitaabii). Because pupils at this level have

little linguistic background, they would find it difficult to produce essay answers (declarative or

expressive).

Figure 18. Levels of comprehension, Grade 1

The two textbooks focus on the lower levels of understanding (recall, understanding, applying).

The first unit did not contain any question to assess the higher abilities (analysis,

evaluation/comprehension, synthesis).

53 Day, R. and Park, J. (2005). Developing reading comprehension questions. Reading in a foreign language, 17(1).

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2005/day/day.pdf

29

0 2 05

0

7

0

6 5 40

objectivequestion

Drafting issues knowledge Comprehension application Analysis,evaluation and

synthesis

Al-Mufiid Kitaabii

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2005/day/day.pdf



What is worth mentioning is the weak assessment of both listening and speaking skills. The

activities used to evaluate reading competency also concern writing, yet they remain limited

(16% in Kitaabii). Our analysis did not detect any activity to assess reading in Al Mufiid.

Second level. In second year, we note the following:

Near absence of evaluation of listening and speaking skills and literary fluency in reading

aloud

Lack of evaluation of assimilation skills, particularly those that require a linguistic and

intellectual effort, such as the higher levels of deduction, analysis, synthesis, and

understanding

Predominance of objective questions (Figure 19)

Figure 19. Types of comprehension questions, Grade 2

For Grade 3, the first unit of the two textbooks Al Mufiid and Murchidi show the results in

Table 19.

Table 19. Question types by textbook, Grade 3

Objectives of question types Al Mufiid Murchidi Total

Remember 7 6 13

Understand 1 20 21

Apply 14 8 22

Analysis/Synthesis/Evaluation 6 6 12

67%

79%70%

33%

21%30%

fi rihab kitaabii mursidii

Questions objectives Questions en ecrit



Table 19 shows that Al Mufiid contained 22 comprehension questions related to the lower levels,

and 6 questions related to the higher levels (analysis/synthesis/evaluation). Murchidi contained

34 comprehension questions related to the lower levels, and 6 questions related to the higher

levels.

The objectives are general and expressed in constructive sentences, as is the case for Murchidi

(Grade 3). The preamble of the first unit reads: “In this unit I will:

Be able to read poems and prose texts in a correct and expressive way;

Identify the vocabulary and understand their meaning;

Acquire vocabulary related to certain values.”

The same objectives are noted in Al Mufiid and point to Islamic values: identification,

concentration, ability, writing, and cooperation.

However, the practice exercises do not have a clear strategy to achieve the given objectives. This

reflects a gap between the fixed objectives and the type of the suggested activities. Accordingly,

assessment remains limited to the lower levels of the Bloom’s classification (remember,

understand, apply) and does not reach the levels of thinking and criticizing (analysis, synthesis,

evaluation). The questions in Al Mufiid are based on memorization and understanding using

question words (why, what, etc.).

The fixed objectives, in addition to being general, are unobservable and immeasurable. The

suggested objectives for Al Mufiid: “I read, I understand, I analyze, I discuss, I search,” and for

Murchidi: “I think, I answer, I search,” are abstract and not specified by behavioral and

procedural actions. These suggested activities are unobservable and immeasurable. Reading

comprehension assessment is dominated by objective questions compared to essay (drafting)

questions. Accordingly, these objectives are based on knowledge that requires recalling and

remembering, and comprehension questions do not reach the higher levels of cognition (See

Figure 20).

Figure 20. Types of comprehension questions, Grade 3

33

40

11

20

Al-Mufiid Murshidii

Objective question Drafting issue



There are 56 total questions related to the lower levels (remembering, understanding, applying),

and 6 questions related to the levels of thinking and criticizing (analysis, composition,

assessment). The same is applicable to activities that deal with linguistic competences that are

considered as information being stored and recalled after the direct question, whereas the other

fields of competence and emotion remained weak. Written production that reflects pupils’

feelings (love, dislike, positions, attitudes, etc.) but lacks development.

4.6 Teaching methods

Figure 21 shows that the books cover reading and discussion as activities, but in different

degrees depending on the book. There are no activities that target listening skills.

Figure 21. Skills covered by the books

The level of difficulty of the text, as well as the way in which the class is taught can have an

effect on the concentration of the students and their capacity to learn. Table 20 below provides

details about how teachers divide their attention when teaching reading, based on the study of

perceptions and practices54.

54 RTI International (2014). Research on reading in Morocco: Analysis of teachers’ perceptions and practices. Final

report: Component 3. Report prepared for USAID under EdData II.

reading writing listening speaking

Al-Mufid 1 1 0 12

Murshidy 13 3 0 5

1 10

1213

3

0

5

Al-Mufid Murshidy



Table 20. Teaching style in the reading classroom

Non-multigrade

classrooms

Multigrade

classrooms

All classroom

types Teacher’s attention

61% 52% 59% All of the children

34% 39% 35% One child only

3.3% 7.9% 4.5% Small groups

.9% 1% 0.9% On someone other than the pupils

.4% 0% 0.3 Is not in the classroom

Source: RTI (2014)

We conclude that most of the time is dedicated to the whole class instruction; that is, all children

receive the same information simultaneously. Students receive individual attention only 35% of

the time. This kind of situation is associated with direct teacher-centered methods that focus on

simple memorization rather than a guided discovery of reading skills.

In fact, looking more closely at the actions of the pupils (Table 21) indicates that a lot of time is

spent on reading aloud and listening to the teacher, who is at the center of instruction. According

to qualitative notes concerning these observations, the activity of “reading aloud” is usually

reading the same text off of the board, in turn, which is similar to collective memorization of

text.

Table 21. Actions of the pupils

Total Grade 3 Grade 2 Grade 1 Action of the pupils

0,9 1,7 1,3 0.2 Recitation

1.1 0.7 0.3 1.9 Group reading

36.6 39.1 40.3 32.5 Individual loud reading

22.6 29.1 23.3 17.5 General participation

0.2 0.1 0.5 0.0 Asking questions

21.7 21.5 21.6 21.9 Listening and following with the teacher

2.0 0.3 0.1 4.5 Writing on the board

3.4 1.9 1.6 5.6 Dictation (board. panel. etc.)

1.2 0.4 2.6 0.8 Openness (writing on papers, copybooks)

0.3 0.0 0.7 0.3 Work in small groups

1.9 1.5 2.4 1.9 Individual activities

2.5 1.0 0.0 5.1 Silent reading

0.7 0.6 1.4 0.3 Other expression activities (games)



Total Grade 3 Grade 2 Grade 1 Action of the pupils

3.4 1.5 1.4 6.0 Orientation, switch

0.6 0.2 1.2 0.6 Other

0.9 0.5 1.3 1,0 Nothing

Source: RTI (2014)

The number of pupils in class, class arrangement and the way of making pupils participate in

class indicate that the methodology used to teach reading is particularly teacher-centered and

does not provide opportunities for differentiated learning.

4.7 Values, issues and scientific vocabulary in the textbook

Education on values in the Moroccan education system is a relatively new phenomenon, which

aims to address previously weak aspects of introducing scientific concepts in education. A focus

on values in the curriculum is emphasized by national Charter on Education and Training (la

Charte Nationale)--the main reference for educational reforms leading to the revision of the

curriculum. The analysis of values in the first three grades follows.

Grade 1

The two textbooks (Kitaabii et Al Mufiid ) presented the following values and issues (Table 22):

Table 22. Subjects of the Grade 1 textbooks

Subject Kitaabii Al Mufiid

Values Respect of parents – Greeting etiquette – Eating etiquette - Cleanliness – Love of learning

Family relationship – Kinship – Cooperation

Topics Learning – Road safety Nuclear family – Lodging – Communication – Participative approach

Scientific concepts None None

Grade 2

The two textbooks (al Mufiid and Murchidii) presented the following values and issues (Table

23):




Subject Al Mufiid Murchidii

Values

Cooperation

Visiting familiy

Giving praise

Visits

Family ties

The value of memorizing the Quraan

Visiting

Knowledge

Taking care of family members

Love for parents

Value of family members

Topics Relation entre l’enfant et la famille

Relation entre l’enfant, la famille et les amis


Grade 3

The two textbooks (Kitaabii and Al Mufiid) presented the following values and issues (Table 24):


Subject Kitaabii Al Mufiid

Values

Honoring parents

Freedom National patriotism Behavior

Helping others

Disagreements

Love for Islam Reading National patriotism

Disagreements

Cooperation and interdependence

Topics None None


Together, we see that there are many similar concepts covered in the units of the book that were

studied, and this is not surprising since the textbook specifications provide the thematic

requirements. However, in the details there are some differences in the extent of the specific

values covered.

More importantly, it appears that during the development of these books, the thematic content is

the primary concern of the writers rather than the pedagogical requirements. Teaching children to

read requires a focus on language characteristics first and foremost, and introducing these



fundamental concepts first. This will ultimately allow children to read larger texts related to

thematic subjects later. It may be possible to accomplish both at the same time, but the more

emphasis should be on the fundamental components of reading.

4.8 Analysis of gender in the textbooks

The issue of gender at school is one of the development axes for any teaching system, which, in

its turn, reflects the development of the whole society. Analysis articles include six standards:

1. Both sexes should be mentioned in the textbooks’ texts in an equal number of times;

2. Inclusion of drawings that express gender equality;

3. Use of a language that takes gender equality into account;

4. Presents gender roles that express equality;

5. Presenting the characteristics that express gender equality;

6. Presenting positions that do not support violence.

The gender analysis tool aims to offer guidance regarding the different ways in which individuals

are represented. This tool contains a set of strategies for assessing books used in teaching and

learning in order to make them feel inclusive for all children.

Based on analyzing the first unit of the textbooks used in the first three years, it is clear that these

books respect these standards and consider gender (Table 25). However, some textbooks do not

respect the standards of: equal repetition in texts, inclusion of drawings that express gender

equality and introduction of the performance of roles that express equality.

Table 25. Gender analysis

Gender criterion


Murchidii Al

Mufiid Kitaabii

Fii RiHaab

Murchidi Al

Mufiid Kitaabii

Equal mention of gender throughout in the books

No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Illustrations represent gender equitably

No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Language used is respectful of gender equality

Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Roles are represented equitably

No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Other elements reflect gender equity

Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Promotes non-violence Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes



In addition to this, the textbooks use reading texts about issues that do not keep pace with

Morocco’s development and do not reflect modern society. The texts reflect a traditional society

that has nothing to do with the modern one where the learner lives. In addition, these texts are

written from the perspective of adults and did not reflect the interests of the learners such as

interest in specific thematic aspects, e.g. frogs, snakes, princesses, dinosaurs, etc. Moreover,

some social issues are negatively treated. For instance, the blind person is represented as always

being in need of help and mercy. The textbook then consciously encourages begging and does

not teach self-reliance. Consequently, it creates a stereotype of the blind as a beggar in society

and not as a self-reliant person who participates in the development of the country.

4.9 Artistic aspects of the textbook

The textbook can be viewed from different perspectives: material, communicative, pedagogical

and cultural. The material aspect is important because it plays an important role in achieving the

required skills in teaching reading. This aspect is reflected on the following points:

Easy handling;

Bookbinding;

The page layout;

The extent to which it is appealing to learners.

Most of the images in Murshidi are ambiguous, and from an esthetic perspective are unlikely to

appeal to young learners and attract their attention to the texts, therefore, undermining the

expected objective which is encouraging them to become avid readers.

The visual aspect of the books are also affected by text density and the number of words used on

the page. In addition, the lines are close to each other, the font size is 12 or 14, which does not

align with best practices that suggest between 32 and 38 point font for young readers (between 5

and 8 years old).55

These comments relative to Murshidi to a large extent, applicable to Al Mufiid, with some slight

exceptions; for example, the texts are less dense, and the space between words and lines is better,

which makes reading more comfortable. A comparison of the two books is in Table 26 below:

55 USAID (2014). Research Paper: Best Practices For Developing Supplementary Reading Materials.



Table 26. Esthetic aspects of two textbooks

Murchidi Al Mufiid

Images

Nine images, of which 4 reoccurred. 30 drawings of which 1 reoccurred 4 times.

The size of most of the drawings does not help analyze them in a way that motivates learners to read the text.

18 drawings and 9 images.

Alternates between Islamic and modern dress of children in the images. Traditional ones: page 7 and modern ones, page 13.

Colors

Weak consistency and harmony among colors which hinders the understanding of the content of images.

All colors are dark, making it difficult to discern the details of the images.

Vocabulary

Abundant vocabulary: 20 words in one line of some texts.

Lines are close to each other and the font size is between 12 and 14 which does not take readability into account and fatigues the sight.

Size of words is between 16 and 18. More space between lines helps to read comfortably.

Cover and paper

Paper quality is good regarding size and type, helping to conserve its quality throughout the year.

4.10 Other issues

Vowelization

Reading texts contained vowelization marks (diacritics) at the end of words to indicate inflection,

and in some cases at the beginning or middle of words. The vowelization of words assists pupils

both in pronunciation of words and in understanding their grammatical role in the sentence.

Punctuation

Punctuation is associated with text complexity. However, Arabic lacks standards that regulate the

sentence’s structure. Many textbooks adopt inconsistent punctuation, which may be an obstacles

that face pupils in reading process. Punctuation defines the length of the sentence and urges

pupils to express using simple and clear sentences. On the other hand, many textbooks do not

respect punctuation rules to the extent that the “comma” or “semi-colon” plays the role of the

“full-stop”. In addition, the number of words in sentences exceeded ten words and more.



It is necessary for the specifications to include the rules of punctuation in a clear manner to show

the place of pause, stop and start as well as the voice tones and speech purposes. This is for the

sake of facilitating the understanding process during reading. The overuse of punctuation marks,

which is actually an indicator that sentences are too long and complex, may constitute a

challenge for learners. It is probable that they do not remember the content of the beginning of

the sentence when they are close to its end.

Prior Knowledge

The natural and spontaneous expression of children is done in their native language, which is

the common language acquired intuitively through normal communication. They use this

language to interact with family members at home, and then with friends and members of the

immediate local community. For children, it is also a tool for self-expression in this close and

personal environment, which is considered as a common and rich cultural heritage. Furthermore,

this mother tongue is full of emotions associated with their feelings and personality and is a

vehicle to transfer their identity.56 Children start primary school at the age of 6 or 7 years,

bringing with them a rich knowledge about themselves, their body, the environment (flora and

fauna, topography and geography); the social environment (family relations, neighborhood, and

classification of people according to their activities with regard to self and family and according

to material and moral characteristics); the world that surrounds them, and about their own

perception of the world.57 However, the teaching language in primary schools is modern

standard Arabic (MSA) as stated by article 65 of the National Charter for Education and

Training:

"The first stage of primary school (6-8 years) aims to consolidate and expand the

knowledge acquired in preschools (4-6 years), so as to make of all Moroccan children,

when they reach the age of eight, the base of a unified and coherent set of knowledge

which prepares them to follow the subsequent stages of education. The first stage of

primary school seeks, among other things, to help pupils acquire the basic knowledge

and skills to understand and make oral and written expressions in Arabic."

It seems that the choice of MSA as language of instruction in educational programs stems firstly

from the fact that teachers in primary education were trained in this language. Secondly,

choosing the classical Arabic as the teaching language is less controversial, because

generalizing it and making it accessible to everyone has been proved to be the best choice from

a national unifying perspective. However, this choice misses the opportunity to build on all the

rich knowledge of children, including phonological awareness and vocabulary and undervalue

the entire existential richness since the first day in school. Consequently, it inhibits the

56 Young, A. and C. Helot, 2003.‘Language Awareness and / or Language Learning in French Primary

Schools Today’, Language Awareness, Vol. 12, No. 3&4 57 Dahbi, M. 2007.“Les arts de la langue: ce que toute langue scolaire doit enseigner”, Attarbiya wa

ttakwin, n° 3, pp. 40-50



children’s ability to express themselves and hinders the understanding of the school world from

their own world.

This is despite the fact that the National Charter (1999:25) has confirmed in its article 61 that

local languages and dialects can be used in the beginning - if necessary - to facilitate the

initiation to reading and writing in Arabic for pupils who start preschool after the age of 4.

"The preschool stage during these two years (5 and 6 years old) aims to acquire the

knowledge and skills that enable pupils to understand Arabic and express themselves

orally with the possibility to use local languages and dialects - if necessary - to

facilitate the initiation to reading and writing in Arabic."

Public schools do not provide preschool education and therefore the goals envisaged in article 65

for primary education between 6 and 8 years cannot be achieved on the grounds that learning

objectives cannot be reached in primary education as emphasized in article 61 of the National

Charter. In the absence of institutional and compulsory preschool education for all children, the

objectives set by the National Charter for Preschool Education will not be achievable.

Furthermore, the absence of preschool education subsequently undermines the objectives of

primary education which in turn creates a kind of chaos in determining the uses and contexts of

both the dialect and the language in school.

Based on field research on primary schools, Tamer (2003) has distinguished between the

activities related to oral expression and speaking, and those related to reading and writing.58

Activities related to oral expression and speaking consist of the observations and directives that

motivate pupils to participate in classroom activities, the interaction between the teacher and the

pupils which allow them to interact freely in the classroom. The pupils react by remaining silent

or by oral expressions after they hear the comments and observations made by the teacher. Based

on classroom activities, Tamer (2003) considers that sentences and phrases related to the context

of reading and writing are performed in classical Arabic while explanations are given in

Moroccan Arabic, Darija.

Interviews conducted with teachers under components 1 and 2 of the USAID research program

(2014) found that attitudes towards the mother tongue differ between pre-service teachers and

those who have been practicing. For example, the study found that half of practicing teachers

agree that "Learning to read in mother tongue helps pupils master standard Arabic" while only

14% of pre-service teachers agree. Similarly, 27% of practicing teachers agree that “Pupils learn

to read fast in standard Arabic when we teach using the mother tongue”, while only 5% of pre-

service teachers do. Finally, half of practicing teachers recognize that: “A child cannot learn

when teaching is conducted in a language which he/she does not know,” while only 14% of pre-

service teachers do. The study also found that 61% of teachers consider that developing

pedagogical materials in the Moroccan dialect is not difficult, and 57% of teachers believe that a

58 Tamer, Y. (2003). Code-Switching In Classroom Discourse, Moroccan Elementary Schools as a Case Study.

AIDA Proceedings, Cadiz, pp. 1-16.



qualified teacher who has adequate educational materials will find it easy to teach reading in the

mother tongue.59 The report concludes, on this subject, that:

“while preservice teachers tend to comply with the curriculum, in-service teachers

adapt to children’s’ reality with mixed methods. The analysis of individual interviews,

focus groups, and classroom observations enable us to assert that both teachers and

students frequently utilize the native language in the teaching of reading in Arabic,

notably in the first year. We observed that first-year teachers tend to agree more with

the utilization of the mother tongue than the second and third year teachers, and use it

more, whenever necessary, in the classroom. (p. 23).”

This smooth natural transition between classical Arabic and Darija in classrooms and in varied

doses depending on every subject indicates that using the dialectial Arabic in the first years of

primary school meets the needs of pupils.

Moreover, experience has shown that dialectical Arabic values the rich knowledge of children

and allows them to express themselves in their mother tongue and to actively participate in the

world of school based on their own understanding of the world. Practically speaking, children

can understand and develop concepts of phonemic awareness and alphabetic principle faster

when it is linked to the language they know and understand. This skill is transferred to reading

ability in additional languages.60 We conclude in this part of the study that it is necessary to

create concrete and functional bridges between the oral vocabulary used in the daily life of

pupils, and the Arabic words used in texts which are most similar to those used in Darija. If the

reading curriculum is carefully designed, it can capitalize on childrens’ knowledge of Darija as a

bridge to learning to decode symbols, to understand the link between print and speech, and to

develop the capacity of phonemic awareness. This approach, which has a pragmatic dimension,

will demonstrate for children that their Arabic mother tongue can be an asset for their

understanding and a tool for their effective participation in the school world.

School should also set the example by showing that using Darija in formal or informal situations

at home is only complementary to classical Arabic used in school. Consequently, both languages

are interconnected. This connection is supported in other fields. For instance, the audiovisual

sector has started to expand the use of Darija in its programs, including those programs where

only classical Arabic was used such as children's programs, cartoons, and dubbed movies.

The transition phase to school. Starting primary school is often an important and difficult event

for parents and children alike. Knowing what teachers hope for at the primary level, and what

they expect from pupils will help both parents and professionals to prepare children for the early

learning of basic skills and for acquiring the prerequisite knowledge to qualify them for success

in school and life in general. Primary school welcomes a large group of pupils from different

59 RTI International (2014). Research on reading in Morocco: Analysis of teachers’ perceptions and practices. Final

report: Component 3. Report prepared for USAID under EdData II.

60 RTI International, MTB-MLE Network (2011). Improving Learning Outcomes through Mother Tongue-based

education. https://www.eddataglobal.org/documents/index.cfm?fuseaction=pubDetail&ID=326




linguistic and knowledge backgrounds. Some pupils have been to monolingual or bilingual

preschool kindergartens, but there are others who have never been to such institutions. The latter

category is divided into two groups:

1. Pupils who have never studied before (speakers of Tamazight or Darija)

2. Pupils who do not speak Darija as their mother tongue (speakers of Tamazight or other

languages (such as the languages spoken by children of immigrants from Arab countries

or other countries).

This unequal situation facing teachers and the school system at the same time at the beginning

stage of schooling creates multiple levels and unbalanced classification within in the first grade.

It also leads to unequal education from the first day at school. As stated in the third component

of the USAID studies (Teacher Perceptions) regarding the results of questioning teachers about

this group of pupils who suffer from reading difficulties, 34% of respondents consider that "even

the most experienced teachers are unable to help some pupils learn to read."

5. Conclusions and recommendations

5.1 General conclusions

We conclude from this study that the curriculum, as stated in the specifications, is characterized

by a kind of ambiguity and a lack of strategic vision. The educational goals intended are not

clear, therefore, they will not be able to draw a clear roadmap for authors to produce the

adequate educational materials. We also found out that:

there is a predominance of general ideas that lack adaptation to the linguistic needs of

early learners;

the time allocated to reading classes is not sufficient to develop pupils’ reading skills; in

fact, there is no ‘reading’ lesson or textbook, rather an ‘Arabic language’ class for which

the objectives are much more broad and therefore lacking in effectiveness;

the curriculum has not given much importance to how to teach Arabic reading to children

in a multilingual environment.

As for textbooks, the study showed that while they succeed to some extent at the cultural level,

they lack, at the pedagogical level:

the key elements that help to learn reading skills, such as phonemic awareness and

alphabetic principle, and gradually increasing text difficulty that encourages children to

become independent readers;

a strategy to address the concept of fluency with regards to speed, accuracy and

comprehension in aloud and silent reading;

the necessary tools to easily read new words in order to understand a text;



a clear strategy on the most frequent and functional vocabulary in the first grades of

primary education;

texts that are classified according to level and gradual complexity from letters to syllables

then to words, which makes decoding words easier;

investment in prior knowledge as a basis to develop the relationship between the sound

and the letter, and between phonological awareness and vocabulary;

a clear strategy to support pupils who have not received a preschool education to bridge

the gap between the levels of pupils in the first grade;

standards that define the level of difficulty of children's stories in the new editions of

textbook

gradually increasing complexity through all levels of primary education (from grade 1 to

6);

accurate and frequent assessment of pupils’ reading skills.

Importantly, textbook effectiveness has not been formally evaluated, nor is textbook content

reviewed and updated in accordance with the evolution of society or research on reading.

Textbooks have never been revised since the publication of the first edition in 2002 until 2015.

Reviewing conditions that oblige authors to update educational materials before reprinting

textbook—even at the most basic level like typesetting or correcting spelling and punctuation

errors—are not mentioned in the specifications. Updating the textbooks on a more frequent basis

would also provide the opportunity to encourage use of new technologies for teachers and

learners, such as complementary exercises and readings on the websites associated with

textbooks, and of how to teach reading skills.

5.2 Observations concerning the improvement of the textbooks

These findings raise a number of issues concerning the textbook and its relationship to teaching

Arabic in the first grades:

Textbooks are not developed in a manner consistent with the latest evidence in early grade

reading methods

1. Teaching Arabic in the early grades in Morocco espouses adopting a whole language

methodology, although some practicing teachers tend to adapt the textbook methodology on their

own to incorporate elements of a syllabic approach.61 With the whole language approach, pupils

remain unable to independently decode words that they encounter for the first time. Thus, they

resort to rely on the general shape and on guesswork when they are unable to identify the word.

In such a situation, pupils do not recognize the letters and their pronunciation, and are not trained

to join letters in syllables and then in words.

61 RTI (2014)



2. The development of reading in the early stages depends on basic linguistic and cognitive

capabilities and skills such as: phonological awareness, knowledge of letters, decoding and rapid

word recognition. These capabilities form an important foundation for reading comprehension.

They enable pupils to acquire an automatic decoding capability and therefore use their cognitive

resources to focus on meaning and understanding. Reading comprehension cannot be achievable

unless these capabilities become automatic, and unless linguistic knowledge is transformed into a

skill through exercise and practice. This approach shift from the whole to the specific has also

led to a change in the method used to teach reading from the analytical to the synthetic method.

It has been shown that phonetic synthesis is one of the most important skills to turn a beginner

reader into an experienced one, in any alphabetic language, including Arabic.6263

3. Direct instruction is based on a set of regular and clear steps that monitor the progress of

pupils towards mastering the targeted skills and consolidate the interactions between the

instructor and pupils. This interaction can be summed up in these three steps, also known as

“gradual release”:

“I do”: Instructor provides a model of the skill

“We do”: Guided practice (doing it together)

“You do”: Independent practice by the child

Explicit and direct instruction provides greater opportunities to engage pupils in learning

activities. The deeper the pupils are involved in learning activities, the better learning they can

achieve.64

4. Strategies are the methods we use when we read or listen to a text. They are not skills

acquired through repetition, but they are complex procedure to perform a task. In order for pupils

to effectively use these strategies, they need to develop an awareness and understanding of the

same process. Then, instructors should encourage pupils to use these strategies so that they can

assimilate and use them when reading, listening and doing other activities that pupils need to

learn as well, such as predicting, verifying these predictions, asking questions and linking what

they read with their daily life.6566

62 Tibi, Sana. (2006). Early intervention procedures for the prevention of reading failure.

، المجلة العربية للتربية الخاصة،”إجراءات التدخل المبكر في الوقاية من الفشل في القراءة“طيبي، سناء عورتاني )2006(

63 Boyle, H., Al Ajjawi, S., & Xiang, Y. (2014). Topical analysis of early grade reading instruction (Project report

for EdData II Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and Middle East). Research

Triangle Park, NC: RTI International. Retrieved at:


64 Archer, A. and Hughes, C. (2011). Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching (What Works for Special-Needs Learners). New York: The Guilford Press.

65 Thompson, 2011

66 Younes, M., 2006.“Integrating the Colloquial with Fusha in the Arabic-as-a-Foreign Language Classroom”, in

Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in 21st Century, K. M. Wahba, Z. A. Taha and L.

England eds.




The content of early grade reading textbooks are not adapted to learners’ needs

Reading programs should affect the way pupils choose to spend some time in reading. It is also

desirable that pupils could come up to the conclusion that reading is something they want to do,

not something they have to do. The essence of the issue is how to ensure the involvement of all

pupils in the act of reading. After analyzing textbooks, it is clear they are not adequate to

produce good and independent readers. Textbooks do not teach vocabulary, do not directly

develop the skills of reading comprehension, do not aim to improve reading fluency. They do not

offer children a choice of activities, reading materials or leveled text, which are elements proven

to influence motivation for reading.67 According to what was mentioned earlier, we can ask the

following questions: what kind of textbooks do children need? And what are the particularities

that must be considered?

Basic early reading content. Textbooks for Morocco must take into account the following:

Provide explicit and direct opportunities to practice phonological awareness, alphabetic

principle, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension;

Promote the understanding of the relationship between sound and symbol based on the

most productive letters of the Arabic alphabet;68

Teach sounds independently of text at first, while building oral language competency in

MSA. When children acquire the skill of phonemic awareness, they will know that a

word like "kataba write" consists of a number of sounds "k, t, b" that can be assembled

and put together to produce other words "kitab book, jaktubu writes, katib writer, etc., or

some letters can be replaced to form other words. This skill will transfer to reading in

print;

Determine and use high-frequency words in reading materials to help develop

automaticity and fluency;

Use a natural and modern language that is close to the daily concerns of children;

Use strategies like images and repetition to help learners build vocabulary and fluency

(for example, The boy sits; the boy reads; the boy sleeps.)

Topics must be selected carefully and in full conformity with childrens’ interests in order to

promote motivation to read. Help children develop interest in reading and enjoy it by providing

more variety in textbook and supplemental materials (content and reading levels), and give them

opportunities to read independently. Some of the topics discussed by textbooks need to be

evaluated and re-examined to assess the added value they bring to the learner at the linguistic and

67 Independent choice of reading materials would usually be the purpose served by classroom, school or community

libraries, which are not widely available or used.

68 “Productive” letters might be the most frequent, but by definition it would be the letters that enable more words to

be read.



cultural level. For instance, in Al-Mufiid, the textbook presents a topic in the second unit for third

graders entitled "This is how I was circumcised." The topic is part of "A Tale of our

Neighborhood" by Najeeb Mahfouz (p. 47). The curricular focus on themes and values is

distracting from creating texts that incorporate the above-mentioned fundamentals of early

reading. This does not mean that the emphasis on values and themes needs to disappear, but a

more explicit focus needs to be on developing decodable text that gradually increases in

difficulty.

Vocabulary and sentence complexity. Specifications need to be more accurate with respect to

vocabulary in terms of number, frequency, proportion of abstract and concrete words, and

number of syllables. Perhaps the discrepancy between texts in terms of type, length and number

of words and sentences is due to the fact that specifications do not discuss this matter thoroughly.

New vocabulary should be added carefully and in consistency with pupils’ development levels,69

although the White Book explains that “the reading activity in the first year should consist of a

limited number of words taken from the functional textbooks studied. In the second year, it

should consist of simple sentences and words associated with the topic of oral communication.”

However, specifications do not mention anything about the number of vocabulary, nor the

number of sentences, their kind or their number of words. This does not help authors to develop

textbook materials that are commensurate with the aspirations of pupils, teachers and the society.

Either the specifications need to be more detailed, or authors need training on effective

approaches to teaching reading in the early grades.

There are not clearly articulated learning outcomes specified in the curriculum or textbooks

The national education system needs to develop a matrix to track learning outcomes targeted in

the early years. The pedagogical guide could be thus improved by developing a working group

composed of experts in curricula, Arabic language teaching methods, educational psychology

and linguistics in order to:

1. formulate learning standards in the early grades that outline what the learner should know

and be able to achieve at the end of each grade;

2. take advantage of regional expertise and evidence of what works in Arabic language

reading and multilingual situations;

3. determine the common vocabulary used in both Arabic and Darija to identify the most

frequent vocabulary and employ them in teaching Arabic in the first years.

4. support reading materials depending on the results of the study on the most frequent

functional vocabulary.

69 Madkur, A. (1991).Teaching Arabic Language Arts. Cairo:lšawwaaf Publishers.

( "تحليل2009العدوي، غسان ياسين ) كتاب لمحتوى تحليلية ومؤشراتها دراسة الجودة الشاملة معايير ضوء في القراءة كتاب محتوى المجلد – دمشق جامعة الأساسي"، مجلة التعليم مرحلة الخامس من للصف القراءة



5. develop reading learning benchmarks based on fluency and comprehension for each of

the first three levels in the light of Moroccan reality, future vision, and global and

regional trends.

These standards would then be used to help improve the textbook specifications so that they

focus not only on technical, artistic and thematic aspects, but also characteristics to develop

textbooks and teacher's guide in a detailed and accurate fashion. The specifications should:

1. provide criteria relative to learning standards and indicators in the first years.

2. oblige authors to respect these indicators and their sequence from one year to another, as

well as defend their methodological approach to show how it demonstrates evidence of

how children learn to read in Arabic.

3. take into account the repetition and sequence of each textbook of the first grades so that

each publisher produces a coherent set of materials that cover three grades in a logical,

sequenced manner.

5.3 Summary of recommendations

Textbooks are only one part of a successful reading program. The recommendations below go

somewhat beyond recommendations for improving curriculum and textbooks, but are necessary

to state in order to ensure that it is clear that textbooks should not try to do everything at once,

but instead focus on the skill of learning to read, which will be more effective when

complemented by other strategies.

Short-term recommendations

Identify the most common and functional 250 words (used in both Arabic and Darija) that

reflect the needs and aspirations of the learner.

Produce additional materials (stories, illustrated books, etc.), where the vocabulary used

is concrete and functional.

Make use of the learner's preschool knowledge and home language to facilitate the

transition to MSA.

Produce a teacher's guide, which explains how to use and simplify the existing teaching

materials and make them more effective through alternative activities, while waiting for

the new textbooks to be published.

Provide a regular reading remediation to bridge the gap between the levels of first graders

who have been to preschool institutions and those who have never received a preschool

education.

Medium-term recommendations

Develop guidelines that determine the level of children’s stories.



Establish class libraries that integrate a variety of reading types, levels and topics,

including multimedia.

Produce easy to understand comics or other formats that are proven to be interesting and

engaging for Moroccan children based on local research.

Incorporate into teaching one to one support and continuous assessment of progress

between the teacher and pupils. This kind of meeting that should take between 3 and 10

minutes. While one of the pupils is having this meeting, the other pupils should be

occupied choosing new books and reading them at their own pace.

Develop the relationship between children and the library and invest library activities

(inside and outside educational institutions) to read stories.

Involve parents and guardians associations and civil society organizations in school

activities to support reading and suggest new ideas.

Arrange for teachers to have direct contact with pupils’ parents and guardians regarding

the progress of their children.

Develop a pedagogical guide in line with current trends in the teaching of reading.

Adjust specifications so that they accurately identify the general and technical conditions

to develop textbooks in accordance with standards and recent trends in language teaching

and textbooks development.

Long-term recommendations

Develop learning objectives for each level and set measurable standards at the end of

each level.

Train teachers in reading skills and in developing reading materials.

Republish textbooks on the basis of the findings of scientific research in the field of

reading, as a series that get gradually more complex.

Use technological means to support language lessons.

Develop pupils’ assessments so that teachers can use evaluation data to follow the

progression of pupils’ performance.

Set benchmarks for reading in the Arabic language in the light of the Moroccan reality,

the future vision and the available data.



Annex 1: Textbook names and references

List of textbooks approved by the Moroccan Ministry of National Education

، المكتبة الوطنية.2002كتابي في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الأولى الابتدائية، .1

1. Kitaabii fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 1 Student Book, 2002. Almaktaba

alwaTaniyya.

، دار الثقافة للنشر والتوزيع.2013المفيد في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الأولى من التعليم الابتدائي، .2

2. Almufiid fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 1 Student Book, 2013. Daar

atthaaafa li nnašri wa ttawzii’.

، مكتبة السلام الجديدة.2013في رحاب اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، .3

3. Fii riHaab llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Student Book, (2013), Maktabat

assalaam aljadiida.

، المكتبة الوطنية.2003كتابي في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، .4

4. Kitaabi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Student Book, 2003, Almaktaba

alwaTaniyya.

، أفريقيا الشرق.2013مرشدي في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، .5

5. Muršidi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Student Book, 2013, Ifriqiyaa

ššarq.

، دار الثقافة للنشر والتوزيع.2013الابتدائي، المفيد في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الثالثة من التعليم .6

6. Almufiid fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 3 Student Book, 2013, Daar

atthaqaafa linnašri wa-ttawzii’.

أفريقيا الشرق.، 2013مرشدي في اللغة العربية، كتاب التلميذ للسنة الثالثة من التعليم الابتدائي، .7

7. Muršidi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 3 Student Book, 2013, Ifriqiyaa

aššarq.

دليل الأستاذ المصادق عليه من لدن وزارة التربية الوطنية بالمغرب .8

8. Teacher’s Guide Approved by the Moroccan Ministry of National Education

، المكتبة الوطنية.2002للسنة الأولى الابتدائية، دليل الأستاذ كتابي في اللغة العربية، .9

9. Kitaabii fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 1 Teacher’s Book, 2002, Almaktaba

alwaTaniyya.



، دار الثقافة للنشر والتوزيع.2013للسنة الأولى من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذالمفيد في اللغة العربية، .10

10. Almufiid fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 1 Teacher’s Book, 2013, Daar

atthaqaafa li nnašri wa ttawzii’.

، مكتبة السلام الجديدة.2013للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذفي رحاب اللغة العربية، .11

11. Fii riHaab llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Teacher’s Book, 2013, Maktabat

assalaam ajjadiida.

، المكتبة الوطنية.2003للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذكتابي في اللغة العربية، .12

12. Kitaabi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Teacher’s Book, 2003,

Almaktabat alwaTaniyya.

، أفريقيا الشرق.2013للسنة الثانية من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذمرشدي في اللغة العربية، .13

13. Murchidi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 2 Teacher’s Book, 2013, Ifriqiyaa

aššarq.

ة للنشر والتوزيع.، دار الثقاف2013للسنة الثالثة من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذالمفيد في اللغة العربية، .14

14. Almufiid fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 3 Teacher’s Book, 2013,

Daar atthaqaafa li nnašri wa ttawzii’.

، أفريقيا الشرق.2013للسنة الثالثة من التعليم الابتدائي، دليل الأستاذمرشدي في اللغة العربية، .15

15. Muršidi fii llugha al’arabiyya, Primary Education, Grade 3 Teacher’s Book,

2013, Ifriqiyaa aššarq.



Annex 2: Frequency analysis of Arabic language

A study of Arabic language by intellarem.com presented the frequency of letters arranged in a

descending order according to the letter’s frequency of use in the Holy Qur’an, as is shown in the

following table:

% Frequency Letter Order % Frequency Letter Order

1 ا 43,542 13.17 19 ذ 4,932 1.49

2 ل 38,191 11.55 20 ح 4,140 1.25

3 ن 27,270 8.25 21 ج 3,317 1.00

4 م 26,735 8.08 22 ى 2,592 0.78

5 و 24,813 7.50 23 خ 2,497 0.76

6 ي 21,973 6.64 24 ة 2,344 0.71

7 ه 14,850 4.49 25 ش 2,124 0.64

8 ر 12,403 3.75 26 ص 2,072 0.63

9 ب 11,491 3.47 27 ض 1,686 0.51

10 ت 10,520 3.18 28 ز 1,599 0.48

11 ك 10,497 3.17 29 ء 1,578 0.48

12 ع 9,405 2.84 30 آ 1,511 0.46

13 أ 9,119 2.76 31 ث 1,414 0.43

14 ف 8,747 2.64 32 ط 1,273 0.38

15 ق 7,034 2.13 33 غ 1,221 0.37

16 س 6,012 1.82 34 ئ 1,182 0.36

17 د 5,991 1.81 35 ظ 853 0.26

18 إ 5,108 1.54 36 ؤ 673 0.20



This study concludes that the frequency order in the text of the Qur’an is as follows: Alif, Lam,

Noon, Mim, Waw, Yaâ, Haâ, Raâ, Baâ, Taâ, Kaf, Ayn, etc. However, and regardless of the

nature of the text, this study will not be considered complete without including statistics about

the frequency of letters from sources other than the Holy Qur’an.

During work on the project of analyzing the curriculum and the textbook, a tool for electronically

counting the frequency of letters was developed to count the letters in the textbooks of the first

three years of primary education in Morocco. This tool was also applied to a number of texts

randomly taken from outside the curriculum for the purpose of comparison. The study showed

the following order for letter frequency:

Frequency of Arabic letters according to recurrence of the letter in different texts selected randomly



The descending order of frequency of letters in different texts randomly selected.

خ. 25 ح. 19 ف. 13 و. 7 ا. 1

ط. 26 ج. 20 د. 14 ر. 8 ل. 2

ى. 27 ض. 21 أ. 15 ع. 9 ي. 3

ش. 28 ص. 22 ك. 16 ب. 10 م. 4

ث. 29 إ. 23 س. 17 ة. 11 ت. 5

ذ. 24 ق. 18 ه. 12 ن. 6

Documents

Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and